Can the level of pleasure derived from music be measured?

someone is very very bored today

Some really funny answers here! I put the question in the same category as my sunset rating system:

Last night was pretty good at an 8.75 but the night before came in at 9.138.no contest!

terry9 wrote:

"Unfortunately, that process is amongst the most intellectually difficult enterprises known to man. The trouble is, everyone thinks he can do it.

Speaking crudely, there are four levels of measurement: nominal (in which different numbers represent different names), ordinal (in which bigger numbers represent relatively bigger effects), interval (in which the ordinal property holds and the difference between 1 and 2 is the same as the difference between 101 and 102), and ratio (in which the interval property holds and zero represents none of the property)."

My Reply:

I didn't want to burden the conversation with too much technical detail, but the psychometric techniques I mention above are based upon Semantic Differentials. As you may well know, Semantic Differential rating scales are bipolar and have an inherent "zero point" in the middle. With properly chosen verbal anchors for the rating points (as per Charles Osgood and his colleague) Semantic Differentials provide ratio level measurement. I typically use Factor Analysis to analyze such data to provide a subset of psychological dependent measures. When correlated with acoustic metrics using Multiple Regression all of this provides a predictive model indicating which acoustic metrics are most strongly associated with each psychological metric. You can literally choose a desired level of perceptual experience and determine what physical metrics are associated with it.

I will often begin a research study by asking participants to imagine their "ideal" experience and rate it using the rating scales. This assumes that participants have some sense of what "ideal" is, which is not usually a problem with experienced participants. With such data you have an "ideal" target against which to compare actual listening data. It should be noted that listeners' "ideal" might not sound realistic. 

I would encourge folks here to set aside those intangible metrices and focus / appreciate those valueable measurements what have already existed. Prior to Erin introducing Klippel’s Near-Field Scanner to this community, direct measures for soundstage were almost non-existant based on my limited knowledge (correct me if I am wrong pls). But looking at the plots he provides on horizontal and vertical polar SPL, we immediately see how wide and how tall the soundstage a particular speaker / driver could actually provide. The lateral and vertical dispersion (aka waterfall) plots might serve similar purpose but I got to admit that I was not able to comprehend and relate those to soundstage as easily as these global polar plots. Let us treasure what we have and worry less about those intangible ones.  I will also be highly interested in how one could capitalize these to come up with a measure for the soundstage depth.