Re:DIY Amps: A Roadmap for Beginners (2017)
by radiowave on Sunday June 23, 2019 @05:21PM
(#20258753)
Yes. Approximately no-one believes that we have definitive measurements of subjective sound, any more than we have definitive measurements of how good a painting is.
The key thing is the equipment owner's self-suggestion, vs. whatever adequately controlled blind testing would reveal.
I've done a small amount of audio restoration work, in which you're often trying to judge (e.g.) how much of a noise-removal process to apply. How much of that high-frequency content is just noise, or is there actually some of the original signal still lurking in there? Apply too much noise-removal and you'll take away some of that signal.
In doing this you frequently bump up against the question, "Can I actually hear a difference?" My rather sobering experience when I actually put it to the test was that I was way beyond the point of being unable to identify different treatments of the same audio, any more than could be explained by random chance, and yet I was still telling myself I could hear a difference.
Re:DIY Amps: A Roadmap for Beginners (2017)
by atoav on Monday June 24, 2019 @06:41AM
(#20262078)
Which is why some professional audio plugins offer a “blind”-mode where all interesting but visually distracting meters, spectra etc are switched off. This is also the appeal of analog gear, where suggestive metering is uncommon.
The key thing is the equipment owner's self-suggestion, vs. whatever adequately controlled blind testing would reveal.
I've done a small amount of audio restoration work, in which you're often trying to judge (e.g.) how much of a noise-removal process to apply. How much of that high-frequency content is just noise, or is there actually some of the original signal still lurking in there? Apply too much noise-removal and you'll take away some of that signal.
In doing this you frequently bump up against the question, "Can I actually hear a difference?" My rather sobering experience when I actually put it to the test was that I was way beyond the point of being unable to identify different treatments of the same audio, any more than could be explained by random chance, and yet I was still telling myself I could hear a difference.