Why HiFi Gear Measurements Are Misleading (yes ASR talking to you…)


About 25 years ago I was inside a large room with an A-frame ceiling and large skylights, during the Perseid Meteor Shower that happens every August. This one time was like no other, for two reasons: 1) There were large, red, fragmenting streaks multiple times a minute with illuminated smoke trails, and 2) I could hear them.

Yes, each meteor produced a sizzling sound, like the sound of a frying pan.

Amazed, I Googled this phenomena and found that many people reported hearing this same sizzling sound associated with meteors streaking across the sky. In response, scientists and astrophysicists said it was all in our heads. That, it was totally impossible. Why? Because of the distance between the meteor and the observer. Physics does not allow sound to travel fast enough to hear the sound at the same time that the meteor streaks across the sky. Case closed.

ASR would have agreed with this sound reasoning based in elementary science.

Fast forward a few decades. The scientists were wrong. Turns out, the sound was caused by radiation emitted by the meteors, traveling at the speed of light, and interacting with metallic objects near the observer, even if the observer is indoors. Producing a sizzling sound. This was actually recorded audibly by researchers along with the recording of the radiation. You can look this up easily and listen to the recordings.

Takeaway - trust your senses! Science doesn’t always measure the right things, in the right ways, to fully explain what we are sensing. Therefore your sensory input comes first. You can try to figure out the science later.

I’m not trying to start an argument or make people upset. Just sharing an experience that reinforces my personal way of thinking. Others of course are free to trust the science over their senses. I know this bothers some but I really couldn’t be bothered by that. The folks at ASR are smart people too.

nyev

@nyev i can see that, and you keep confusing things, so you will never actually understand what you don’t agree with. The health issues related to sitting is not something that changes what we know about chairs. Sure, it may influence future designs, but again, it doesn’t change what we know about chairs. 
 

since you can’t get things like this straight in your mind, you are not able to have a scientific discussion, and that is why people who believe in facts and science have very little patience with people who just vomits words.

@p05129 

testing for all variables would be extremely expensive for manufacturers. You are talking about impossibilities...and also not practical.

I have found some major disappointments that I might post in a photo on my profile today.. talk about huge discrepancies!!

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The fireball sounds were a "long standing mystery" according to the article I read. Not some source of mockery for those who claimed to hear them, although there always are some mockers out there of absolutely everything. The problem comes from people insisting that their explanation of the sound they are perceiving is adequate when it isn't. The explanation for this one has been hard to come up with, partly because it's hard to be there on the scene with test equipment when it's happening. But if you come up with a plausible explanation and then test that idea by generating your own bright light that's sequenced to play a tune, and that tune can be audibly heard and recorded from a black surface receiving the light, then you've done something that sheds some light on the subject. 

I'm sure they could do a blind test easily with this. Just cover people's eyes and have the indicate when they hear sound emitting from the surface. If they accurately indicate the right times that correspond with the light emission then you know they are actually hearing the photo acoustic effect. Blind test - should be easy to pass. If it's not, you have to ask yourself why, and at least question whether or not it's really a sound wave that you're perceiving. 

If anything this whole story validates the usefulness of plausible hypothesis and then measurements to verify perceptions that are surprising and unexpected. When it comes to high end audio not too many serious people are doubting that audiophiles are really perceiving differences in sound. The debate is about people's unverified hypotheses about why they're perceiving those differences.