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In Reply to: RE: I appreciate your comments... posted by John Atkinson on August 01, 2014 at 04:04:26
. . . regarding the audibility of differences between crossover capacitors was conducted by some speaker building hobbyists at a DIY meet a couple of years ago, and reported on the PE Tech Talk board. The speaker used was a well-conceived design with excellent drivers. Several different caps matched to 0.5% tolerance were switched between in a second-order electrical highpass filter -- a good quality nonpolar electrolytic, and some different film and film-foil types ranging from basic Dayton polypropylenes to some exotic and costly ones.
Basically, nearly every member of the listening panel was able to consistently hear the difference between the NPE and the film caps -- comments ranged from "slightly worse" to "gritty and awful" -- but nobody could consistently identify one film type over another.
These guys were "objectivists" to a man, not of the hostile sort out to prove that very small measurable differences are inaudible, but skilled and practiced listeners with the genuine scientific curiosity to test what they could and could not hear.
Follow Ups:
Hello Brian,
When I lived in the area I attended the annual PE Summer DIY session. They are always good fun.
Years ago at one of the gatherings there was a fun test very similar to what you describe. The difference was we were listening for the difference between low cost mylar caps and pricier polypropylene caps. We were in a hotel room so only about 5-6 folks at a time could participate. So we took the test and when it was over we admitted we could not tell a difference, but there was one fellow who got it right. He nailed it. When asked he said over the years he had been trained to listen better. It turned out he was a local midwest manufacturer.
I found that experience an eye opener.
Regards,
Marty
Marty
I suspect there are a LOT of auditory phenomena which the ordinary music lover cannot readily discern (maybe especially under the stress of ABX conditions), but which can be readily heard and identified by those who have spent LOTS of time listening for the subtler effects and training themselves to recognize said effects.
I've known technicians who can listen to pink noise and instantly pinpoint to within a few Hertz any peaks or dips in the system response, and can hear and identify distortions at levels below 1%. Probably some innate talent there (like perfect pitch), but certainly cultivated through much practice in critical listening. My own hearing is pretty good, but not THAT good -- I can recognize problems with phase and frequency response when they are present -- something just sounds "wrong" -- but have to trot out the test gear to pinpoint them.
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