Ran into this interesting listening test by Klippel with regards to how much distortion you can hear.
This is the link:
http://www.klippel.de/listeningtest/lt/
Just casually wanting to see the test, I went with the defaults and for some reason, the levels were exceptionally low. I had to set my headphone level to max and only test with a sealed headphone to even hear it.
On second try, clicking on the volume check provided much, much louder signal but I did not run this test.
I also forgot to select a speaker model, going with "--". Not sure what that represents. There is interesting set of choices in the drop down.
Anyway, was taking the test and recording a snapshot from time to time and it all of a sudden quit on me saying I had run enough. This is my snapshot:
View attachment 29815
The thing is ruthless when you miss, sending you back good number of steps. Once I got a sense of it, I was making good progress until it terminated me at -30 dB. Strangely it says this was my results:
View attachment 29816
-6 dB??? I went to -27 and possibly -30.
Also strange to see a larger number of people (313) detecting -45 dB but not higher distortions above that???
Fascinating that 1921 people could not get past the highest level of 18 dB!!! We have a lot of deaf audiophiles and seemingly, speaker engineers.
I am not very clear what the Real Speaker anchor is doing in there. Is that typical distortion simulated for a speaker? If so, I am able to hear distortion of -30 dB below that?
Here is the only bit on it in the Klippel paper:
View attachment 29817
Anyway, take the test and take a snapshot as you go along as the summary results seems wrong. Don't be shy about the outcome. You won't be judged unless your first name is Thomas, or Sal....