Aural Diversity

[Kyban]

This may explain a lot about why there are such disagreements on the sound of audio.

The world is built for people with perfect hearing — but 83% of people don't have it

Your lived experience has more to do with your hearing than you might think.

news.stlpublicradio.org

 

[antcollinet]

This may explain a lot about why there are such disagreements on the sound of audio.

The world is built for people with perfect hearing — but 83% of people don't have it

Your lived experience has more to do with your hearing than you might think.

news.stlpublicradio.org

Well perhaps, but cognitive bias probably explains more.

I believe most of the disagreements come from congitive bias, because most of the disagreements are about audio differences below the threshold of hearing - even for people with perfect hearing.

I've seen very few people saying "I can't hear it so you can't either"

 

[alex-z]

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Subjectively-preferred-steady-state-room-curve-targets-in-a-typical-domestic-listening_fig6_283039780

Even accounting for aural diversity, most people follow the same trend line of preferring a bass bump, neutral mid-range, and treble which is either neutral, or slightly sloped down. For people with hearing damage, you might ramp up the treble 2-3dB above neutral, but going beyond that has questionable value. If someone had a major impairment, you would want to generate a unique equal-loudness contour for them, and tune the frequency response based on that.