[bob]

On Apr 4, 2:38=A0pm, Audio Empire wrote:

Someone is confusing hearing acumen with LISTENING acumen.

That someone would be you, as you are about to demonstrate:

It is pretty well
established that most normal people hear the same range of sounds, both a=
s to
frequency response and dynamic range and that they respond to these thing=
s in
a similar way. OTOH, some people, when listening to music, hear things in
music that other people miss entirely. This is LISTENING ability.

Fine. In that case, the difference between two audio components has
nothing to do with what you are calling listening ability. It is not
that there are "things in music" which can be heard through one amp
but not another. It is that there are *partial loudness differences*
between the two. If you don't understand and recognize the difference,
you can't begin to understand the issues here.

You
encounter all the time the myth about "golden-eared audiophiles". Well, I=
'm
sure that I need to tell no one here that there is no such thing. But the=
re
are audiophiles who have trained themselves to listen for the minutest
anomalies in the reproduction of music by audio gear. There's nothing
"golden" about it, all it takes is a willingness to do it and many years =
of
listening experience.

I seriously doubt there are many audiophiles in the world who have
trained themselves properly to hear differences, or would even know
how. If you think it takes "many years of listening experience," we
can confidently put you in the category of not knowing how. You can't
train your ears to hear the kinds of sonic differences we are talking
about simply by listening to music. Sean Olive does not train his
listening panel that way. The people who test audio codecs do not
train their test subjects that way, nor would it pass muster with the
ITU.

bob