What covid research can teach us about audio measurements.

@ebm

Single line replies are sad.

@prof

There was a post here a while ago from a psychologist/researcher who aptly collected what I keep trying to say.

A measurement of THD is a measurement of THD. A measurement of frequency response is a measurement of frequency response. To extend those measurements beyond that is not science, it is pseudo science. To take those measurements and discuss "ideal" or the end of all things that can be heard is not science. It is also not science to repeat measurements and rank equipment based on them. That is quality assurance.

It is also not science to lump average human perceptions and claim this is how 1 individual hears.

There is no scientifically agreed to set of measurements which together describe all the human ear/brain is capable of hearing. All we have is a minor number of measurements which are in popular (well, as popular as audio is) culture.  I doubt those measurements which Stereophile publishes, are even close to all that is used in modern engineering and development.

As for the rest, caveat emptor, but I won’t hide under the umbrella of science when I’m actually ignorant.

Best,

Erik

@prof

There is a big difference between doubting science and doubting that measurements tell you what they were never meant to tell you in the first place. Much of pseudo-science actually starts off with some modicum of truth or scientific fact and then goes somewhere it has no right to.

Those absorbed with a handful of audio measurements that are in the public consciousness are very much in this space.

You may not think that measurements matter but they sure as hell do when anything is constructed.

I certainly have never said measurements don't matter, only that in a scientifically driven world we'd be using new and different sets of measurements as our knowledge and research progressed.  That we are still using 50 year old measurements in the common press should be a good sign that more can be discovered.

Anyway the analogy doesn’t make sense to me. They weren’t measuring the MRI machine.

Think of medicine, and that doctors and researchers repeatedly break into two camps.  One camp always looks for more information and more ways of looking at disease. 

Another group gets into a cycle of believing something is true, and that all that can be learned has been learned, until some new technique or tool comes along which forces a change.

Two instances I can think of is polio treatment and gastric ulcers. At some point we thought ulcers were caused by stress. For decades. Only in the late 1980s did a pair of curious pathologists come to discover it’s often caused by bacteria.

Audio measurements, those in the common publications (Stereophile, TAS, Hifi+, etc.) have been more or less stagnant for solid state devices for decades. Of course researchers may be working on more, or use more which we don’t hear about. Audio Precision has an R&D department, but how long has it been since we in the lay readership/press have heard of a new type of measurement which means something to a listener?  Not more precision for old measurements but actually new measurements?

This is why medicine is a good analogy. Let’s not get stuck thinking measurements assembled 50 years ago are all that could be known.