[bob]

On Apr 3, 10:33=A0am, Scott wrote:

Well OK....if the reason is that it's been covered in the past so
extensively that it is old news/established conclusions based on a
substantial body of evidence that would explain why it isn't being
covered *now* But audio is a reletviely new technology in the grand
scheme of things so there must have been a time when it wasn't old
news. So what about the peer reviewed research that was done back when
it was news not old news? Can you cite the old news/body of peer
reviewed research from the past that supports your assertions of
transparency?

The invention of high-fidelity home audio reproduction was not a
revolutionary event in the field of psychoacoustics. It's not a study
of equipment; it's a study of human perception. And human perception
did not suddenly change when Avery Fisher started making amps. So, no,
the issue of the audibility of consumer audio products was never of
great interest to the field.

There's also a fallacy at work here about the centrality of peer-
reviewed journals. The vast majority of what we know in any academic
field never appeared in a peer-reviewed journal. In most fields other
than medicine, peer review was not really formalized until well into
the 20th century. Even since then, a lot of good, hard science never
makes it into one of the few top journals in any given field. And just
because something makes it into a peer-reviewed journal doesn't make
it right.

A better picture of the state of knowledge in the field can be found
in textbooks, which are not only peer-reviewed but must also stand up
in the marketplace. You aren't going to sell many textbooks if your
colleagues think you got a lot of stuff wrong, after all. I know of
only one psychoacoustics textbook that discusses audio gear directly.
I'll bet you can guess what it says. :-)

As I said in an earlier post, the real scientific case here rests on
the well-documented limits of human hearing perception, mapped against
the measured performance of audio gear. The DBTs that have been done,
either by scientists or amateurs, serves largely to confirm that
science.

bob