Yes, frequency response magnitude changes midrange presence. So does harmonic distortion spectrum, even at levels below typical audibility thresholds in isolated sine tests. So does damping factor and its interaction with speaker impedance. So does temporal behavior and group delay. You regularly measure most of these.
You seem to be confusing frequency magnitude response with impulse response. These are functions of phase in the impulse response not frequency. GD is the negative derivative of phase.
Electronics, loudspeakers, and rooms are
As an experience, definitely yes. The atmosphere, the audience reaction, the interplay between the artist and the audience (which includes the listener), the artist right there. Nothing beats it.
I knew this one would come
There is an important catch, though. Once you insert it into a practical crossover, its phase shift changes the summation between the drivers, so the acoustic frequency response changes as well. That’s exactly why all-pass networks are used for crossover alignment in the first place.This is exactly why I consider controlled listening an essential complement to measurements. I spend a great deal of time linearizing crossover phase using allpass filters. The changes are hard to hear I agree, but one effect I repeatedly observe is that the center phantom image rises toward ear level as the drivers become better phase aligned. A vocalist that previously appears to originate near the floor often locks into a more natural height. Conventional measurements can show improved phase alignment, but they don't tell you how the auditory system reconstructs the resulting spatial image. Soundstage is ultimately a perceptual phenomenon created by the brain, so listening remains an indispensable part of evaluating these changes.
There is no difference. If you can hear something, you can measure it. If you like a certain characteristic, you can measure that too. Precisely because the instruments we use (including ADCs) are better than human hearing by orders of magnitude.
I think I understand why some people get stuck on this. I agree in general with your OP, but I think this statement should be tempered a bit. The fact is, signals that *are* identical sound identical, and no one could argue otherwise. But merely to say they measured identical is not sufficient because it does not address whether the measurements performed were complete. The only way to be sure that two signals "measure identical" that I can think of would be to subtract them and show that the remainder is zero. This is a valid test and can easily be performed. But such strong conclusions should not be made based on the matching of a handful of commonly measured audio system properties alone, i.e., SNR, THD, SINAD, etc. These are necessary but not sufficient to claim identical. I think blind A/B testing is probably the best way to say if signals (or systems) sound identical. The fact that such testing tends to support the measurements above is really what gives them credence.
ADCs designed and used for measurements are typically as good or better than ADCs used for recordings in the relevant measurable dimensions (SNR, THD, linearity, flatness of FR).
