Steven said


So, people are quite often wrong about a key dimension,
when they report their memory of a live musical event.

The implications for those who claim that audio memory
is a sufficient means for determining how much a home
system varies from 'the absolute sound', should be clear.
BRBR

I strongly disagree with your analysis and conclusion. If the cause of the
mistake in level was due simply to failed memory then the results would have
been all over the place. It is unlikely that listeners would so uniformly make
the same mistake if it were a mistake in memory. I think the results suggest
something quite different. The listeners were asked to match level. They were
not asked about the total fidelity of the results. I would speculate that the
mistaken estimations in level marked a consistent preference for one distortion
(level) to compensate for other distortions (non level) to create a perceived
higher level of accuracy.