- Joined
- Apr 15, 2019
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A few reasons @MakeMineVinyl won't give you a hard number:
1. Every person's hearing is different. What might be audible to you may not be to me, and vice versa.
2. It depends on which harmonic/nonharmonic (in the case of IMD) we're talking about - as you get further from the fundamental they're masked less and less, and nonharmonic info is also masked less (so IMD is in a lot of cases somewhat more offensive than harmonic distortion).
3. It depends on listening level. Distortion is less apparent at high volumes because our ears themselves have some intrinsic distortion.
4. It depends on frequency. LF distortion is way less noticeable than distortion in the midrange and presence region - as in, 10% THD for a signal around 40hz is probably juuuuust barely audible, but 1% arouind 1-2k is probably pretty audible.
I don't think it's hard to test every one of these things scientifically. It sounds like 100 people has to do some listening tests, and one could come up with a comprehensive set of contour curves.
But who would want to find out the truth when mystifying "distortion" makes more money?
When a new product is an improvement over the old, it just takes over the market. For example, DVD vs HD vs 4K. What replaced tubes and vinyl?