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RE: Audiophile phenomenon?

A believer huh? Well I do believe in many things, I especially believe in science and systems engineering. And I believe that humans are fascinated by puzzles, I certainly am.

I enjoy listening to music at home and part of it is that I love the, well the sound of the music. The sound quality. For me that is probably as important as the music or the performance so I believe that I am an audiophile, an audio lover. I'm also fascinated by why a seemingly simple system such a stereo can be so cranky. Despite what you might think, I don't frequent refrigerator forums even though I like my beer cold. I'm not a brewophile, while I like good beer I can drink almost anything. That isn't true for music, live or reproduced. So my interest in this field is two-fold, to have good sound at home, and in the process to understand, control and quantify as much as possible the subtle factors that influence it.

If a fellow had that information in hand and could dial them in and out in any combination, and cared, i.e. was planning to go into the business, then a large scale DBT would be invaluable to assess the sensitivity of the general population and be able to establish useful limits. On the other hand for individuals, only one set of ears/mind/tastes matter, ours. So doing group testing would provide no value whatsoever. Even if, as is likely, the group discovered that I was totally indifferent to or couldn't hear certain forms of distortions, that would only be of value in that I could ignore them as a concern.

Sorry to drag on here, but speaking of beliefs, you seem to hold one that sees DBT's as the golden pinnacle of scientific thinking. I don't see them in quite the same way, they are a technique with limited applications and reliability. They can easily produce misleading results which is why the folks that must use them do so very methodically and realize that the results are only an indication of tendency. But sometimes that's the best you can do so you do it. As far a driving progress they are a weak sister compared to correlated measurements.

For most of us this is just a hobby and this forum provides valuable insights both from the sharing our experiences and from folks in the business graciously giving us the benefit of some of their knowledge. If you question the credibility of an observation, just weight it accordingly.

Regards, Rick

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  • RE: Audiophile phenomenon? - rick_m 01/28/0910:29:01 01/28/09 (0)
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