Measurements matter in correlating what we think we hear with what we do hear with what we desire to hear.
Psycho-acoustics is incomplete as is the science of understanding human hearing is also incomplete. How that all ties to ’not fully understood psychology’ is also an incomplete subject.
I strongly believe in the use of both measurement and listening tests.
Eg, that we can erase and do erase..the noise and constant of interference in our human eyes. We editorialize as a form of discernment. That ’editorialization’... is a subconsciously controlled variable.
We do this In each and every single fraction of a second of using our eyes. (veinous structures in our eyes are easily visible but are removed from our ’view’ through our eyes, by the eye/brain mechanism)
Or in the sensations in our bodies.
Or with our hearing, where we editorialize and remove noise out of the noise floor and remove noise that protrudes above that noise floor. We have subconsciously variable complex filters for our hearing, on an individual capacity level, via learning and inherent individualized capacities - as a pairing.
Hold your eyes completely still and open for about maybe a minute, your eyes will ’grey out’ all that you see. This is because the mechanism of eye and brain is designed to remove/separate the noise floor from the signal. Where your eye says that the things that do not move, are background noise and part of the eye - and not part of what you are trying to see.
There is no ’cart-blanche’ of saying, ’don’t trust your hearing at all" and trust ONLY audio measurement. Such a pronouncement is a fools game, the kind of hard decision made by the illiterate.
People do that, when they reach their cognitive limits, they go all hard and black & white, on/off, yes/no.
It’s a human animal thing, it’s about self protection in the face of dangerous unknowns. The mind, not knowing the direction or truth of a given matter.... is overruled by the body and goes to ground. It’s also a way of finding the edges of people’s cognitive package. You know their limits when you see it as they advertise it loudly - all over the place.
This is my cognitive package’s edge and limits! I will go no further! You are all wrong!
Don’t trust your hearing! charlatans! Fooling yourselves!
(I have my limits as well, we all have them, I’m not somehow exempting myself - I’m not claiming any superiority, here)
The deal is that human hearing is a terrific, highly capable measurement package. Where understanding how it works and what it’s limits are, is key.
Importantly, hearing is as variable in individuals as IQ and cognitive capacities are, and is connected to cognitive capacities in the given individual. Thus, it cannot be nailed down into being some sort of hard number tha is relevant to all scenarios for all people. Not possible.