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Re: Some comments

Steve,

You may be right about measurements of air pressure - I haven't heard of that being done as a test. I can't see how it would tell us what the difference was, and I assume that is part of what you mean about tests such as jitter, THD and IMD being used to identify and quantify specific behaviours. If the air pressure measurements are as precise as you say, then we probably do have a test that would indicate whether or not something makes a difference in the sound produced. It's probably a bit harder to translate that into an accurate statement about whether or not an actual difference is audible when the difference is slight, simply because the answer may not only rely on hearing acuity but also on knowing what to listen for and how to listen for it.

As for the correlation between objective test results and the subjective listening experience, I accept your comment about us not hearing just with our ears. I'd probably say that we listen with our ears and hear with our brains. Still David McGown asked whether we had the tools and models to measure the right things and correlate them with what we perceive and Ethan said that we do. I'm simply not quite clear what you're trying to say when you said:

"But that presumes that the reviewers' subjective perceptions are wholly the result of actual audible stimulus.

However we know that subjective perceptions are not unerring reflections of objective reality. That's because we don't hear with just our ears. Our ears are plugged into our brain and it's our brain that ultimately gives us our perception.

To assume that one's subjective perceptions not always fitting with objective measurement is only because we haven't refined our measurements is to completely ignore very real and well-established weaknesses with regard to human aural perception."

Your first 2 paragraphs state that our perceptions are determined in part by things that are not audible stimuli and that certainly is true. I never claimed they weren't. I think what your last paragraph in that quote says is that the fact that we have weaknesses in aural perception also contributes to the inability to correlate perceptions with measurement, and I'm not arguing against that either. My point is simply that Ethan has made the unqualified claim that we can make correlate perceptions with measurements and the lack of qualification implies that we can account for everything that we perceive with the measurements now available to us. I accept your statement that there have been many good correlations made, but you've fallen quite a bit short of the claim that Ethan appears to be making, and it's that claim I'm disputing. I'm not saying that some things don't correlate very well. I'm simply saying that not everything correlates well, that there have been times in the past when we haven't had measurements to correlate with some perceptions but have subsequently developed them, and that there will no doubt be times in the future when we again come up with new measurements that do correlate well with perceptions that will have been the subject of previous dispute and for which no prior good correlations existed. Ethan implies that is not the case, and that we can currently correlate everything adequately. That's not the sort of claim that one can ever really prove because it relies on knowing the future and of course we don't. And if that claim can't be proved, then it can't be relied on to help prove something else.

My point is simply that one can't dismiss bad science with bad science. While I do think the onus lies with people making claims about the efficacy of something to prove their claims, the onus is equally on people who want to make counter claims as to why that thing isn't effective to also make claims which they can back up and prove. Failure to do so is not good science and it's questionable whether it even deserves the title of 'science'. It can even be dishonest in some cases. Either way it doesn't help.

David Aiken

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