Even more than the actual contact with the media, the entire system breaks down at the ears. If your ears aren’t well-trained, then you don’t even know what to listen for. You might think loud bass is good, or booming drums, and never notice that you can’t hear any mids.
So in a blind test like this, some people just might prefer a sound that this experiment has little impact on, so they wouldn’t be able to notice any differences.
A well-trained ear might be able to detect differences between them, but still not have a real preference. Besides being able to hear all the different frequencies, you have to know what the instruments sound like in real life to know if those frequencies are reproducing accurately. Again, if you don’t what it’s supposed to sound like, you really don’t know if ANY change in components makes a positive or negative difference in the natural sound, you only know the difference relative to your personal preference.
TL;DR: This “experiment” doesn’t prove anything. It’s just funny.
Some of it is genetic, but a lot of it is years of training in hearing and teasing out all the frequencies.
I spent years in the audiophile record business back in the transition days from analogue LPs to digital CDs, and spent a LOT of time with beyond top-of-the-line audio gear, including high end stuff that wasn’t even on the consumer market.
My ears got trained from many years in bands and orchestras, then recording sessions, then hearing the final recordings on CD, as well as thousands of other recordings, and many live performances by some of the greatest orchestras in the world. I know what it is supposed to sound like at every stage of the process.
Bottom line, cables aren’t going to be a major issue. Guarantee you’ve got at least 10 other variables making a bigger difference, and most of them can’t even be fixed.
Only noticing the distortion you care about is fine. If you don’t notice it, it is necessarily irrelevant. You are not a computer, analog audio signals are not a digital transmission of data, where errors make the data unreadable.
An original recording was provided. The re-recordings are supposed to sound like the original. They’re not testing microphones, or whatever processing the audio engineer did, the sound of the original instruments is irrelevant.
Even more than the actual contact with the media, the entire system breaks down at the ears. If your ears aren’t well-trained, then you don’t even know what to listen for. You might think loud bass is good, or booming drums, and never notice that you can’t hear any mids.
So in a blind test like this, some people just might prefer a sound that this experiment has little impact on, so they wouldn’t be able to notice any differences.
A well-trained ear might be able to detect differences between them, but still not have a real preference. Besides being able to hear all the different frequencies, you have to know what the instruments sound like in real life to know if those frequencies are reproducing accurately. Again, if you don’t what it’s supposed to sound like, you really don’t know if ANY change in components makes a positive or negative difference in the natural sound, you only know the difference relative to your personal preference.
TL;DR: This “experiment” doesn’t prove anything. It’s just funny.
Interesting, do you know where I can buy a set of trained ears? - Audiophiles, probably.
Some of it is genetic, but a lot of it is years of training in hearing and teasing out all the frequencies.
I spent years in the audiophile record business back in the transition days from analogue LPs to digital CDs, and spent a LOT of time with beyond top-of-the-line audio gear, including high end stuff that wasn’t even on the consumer market.
My ears got trained from many years in bands and orchestras, then recording sessions, then hearing the final recordings on CD, as well as thousands of other recordings, and many live performances by some of the greatest orchestras in the world. I know what it is supposed to sound like at every stage of the process.
Bottom line, cables aren’t going to be a major issue. Guarantee you’ve got at least 10 other variables making a bigger difference, and most of them can’t even be fixed.
Everything you said is wrong.
Only noticing the distortion you care about is fine. If you don’t notice it, it is necessarily irrelevant. You are not a computer, analog audio signals are not a digital transmission of data, where errors make the data unreadable.
An original recording was provided. The re-recordings are supposed to sound like the original. They’re not testing microphones, or whatever processing the audio engineer did, the sound of the original instruments is irrelevant.