AES and Its Papers

[fas42]

What amuses me when I come across some of the AES papers, peer reviewed or otherwise, are the massive assumptions they frequently contain - "We used an acceptable quality replay system to test this; therefore, the results are valid" type of thing ...

[fas42]

8 hours ago, NOMBEDES said:

 

Yes.  I understand.  
 

But with all our engineering and science can we overcome poor recording practices or the quirks of our home environment?
 

 

 

Yes, one can. Turns out that the human hearing system is remarkably capable of compensating for deficiencies in what it listens to - completely unconsciously. However, it still has limitations - when two conflicting sources of degrading distortion are overlaid onto the original captured event, then it's too much - result is fatiguing listening, or it being just plain too unpleasant or annoying to suffer for any length of time.

 

So, the options are: brilliantly recorded music played on mediocre and above systems - this works; and the other being recordings at all ranges of quality replayed on a setup which adds zero subjectively audible artifacts - this also works. The latter is somewhat hard to achieve, but worth it - because it opens one up to being able to enjoy the vast legacy of a century plus of recording ...