"J G Miller" wrote in message
...
On Thursday, November 10th, 2011 at 01:24:02h +0000, Java Jive wrote:

All representational art to some extent is a distortion of reality.

Every person's perception of reality is a distortion of reality.

Absolutely, thank you for making this point. It has been shown repeatedly
that humans are poor witnesses, we fail to see and hear things that happen
in front of us, and can easily be persuaded that we saw and heard things
that didn't. And even when we do see and hear the things that did, actually,
occur we get the details wrong.

When a listener compares two sounds (s)he is comparing the live experience
of one with the memory of the other, and that memory will not be an accurate
recording of the previous experience. Rather it will be an impression,
coloured by their emotional reaction to the earlier listening experience and
thus unreliable as a way of telling which is "better".

So if we want to have a meaningful subjective comparison of, say, CD and LP
we need, at the very least, many comparisons by many people with all
irrelevant factors taken account of. In particular the listeners must not
know which sample is which to ensure that beliefs and prejudices cannot come
into play.

David.