Are links to other audio sites permitted?? This is an illuminating opinion on distortion posted on another forum by an author who is also a member here,
@atmasphere . If Amir or the author would rather it didn't appear here on ASR, I suppose they can remove it.
All distortion is more audible that most people think
I don't have a problem with you linking to this - thanks!
What I do have a problem with - and you are not the only member who has done this - is posting something supposedly because it's "interesting" or in this case "illuminating," and not being up-front about your real view until after folks start to weigh in.
In post #7, you take
@FrantzM to task for not properly refuting the "opinion," and then throw in the Appeal to Authority fallacy:
the author has been for many years a highly reputed designer and maker notably of tube amplifiers and recently also a class D amplifier.,
And then in post #9 comes the unverified factual assertion about whether folks can hear differences between two properly functioning amps with low distortion specs, plus the classic "your gear or ears aren't good enough" claim:
lots of people are able to do so depending, of course, on the two amplifiers in question. Perhaps consult an audiologist.
It's interesting - I would say telling, in fact - that you jump right over the important question of how exactly the audio and hearing mechanisms Ralph mentions work and whether or not his explanation leads to a scenario in which we could possibly hear that distortion. Instead, you go right to "people can hear it, so that's settled fact, and your hearing must be defective."
When it comes to a fact-based question like whether humans can hear very low levels of distortion that have been determined by decades of testing to be inaudible, that's not an "opinion" - or to put it more precisely, that opinion is meaningless and "of no value," as
@RandomEar notes above. If the author has some proper data or evidence to substantiate his claim, we'd all love to see it. But in that case it's not really an opinion anyway.
As for the author's design expertise, that's great. But he doesn't have to have entirely scientifically correct beliefs about distortion in order to design and build amplifiers that perform well and/or sound fine or good to listeners. If he thought, say, 20% THD were inaudible, that would of course be a problem since it might lead him to build amps with massive, clearly audible distortion. But if he thinks very low levels of distortion are audible, that would presumably lead him to minimize distortion in his designs - perhaps going to unnecessary lengths and expense, but not resulting in amps that sounded bad. Such a belief could, however, lead him to cast aspersions on other amp designs even though those designs are also audibly transparent aka sound fine/good.
Finally, an audiologist is going to test for volume-based acuity across frequencies, topping out at 8kHz in most cases. They might ask if any of the tones or sample voices they test you with sound audibly distorted, but even there, the entire point is that the signals they test you with are
not distorted (or have distortion below the level anyone would be able to hear or be concerned about for the purposes an audiologist would be testing you). So to the minimal extent an audiologist will test for distortion, they will be testing for the
opposite of the ability to detect distortion - they will be testing to ensure you can't/don't hear distortion. So your audiologist comment is not only nasty and obnoxious, but it's also ignorant in the extreme. Maybe put a little more thought into your insults before posting?
