Hearing adjustments

Here is the biggest credibility problem: hearing adapts. You can’t judge accuracy of a reproduction system unless your hearing is well acclimated by daily listening to the absolute standard: physically generated music, with no mics, wires and speakers in the room, just musicians using their fingers and lips to make sound.

One of my audio gurus, Siegfried Linkwitz, gave a talk at the AES convention a few years back which castigated audio engineers for NEVER listening to live music. The people who judge tests like CD vs. SACD listen to speakers all day, every day of their professional life and NEVER go to acoustic concerts. Even if they spend a few minutes in the studio listening to real music being played, the setups are typically one to three musicians at a time, or musicians in separate rooms, and all studio rooms are carefully deadened to increase separation!

This means that AUDIO ENGINEERS ARE DEAF TO THE SUBTLETIES OF MUSIC PLAYED IN A ROOM. They were raised listening to speakers and never learned what real music sound like.