alt Hacker NewsIs there a limit to how good a sound people can appreciate? Like the guy who has his own electric supply, can he really hear the difference or is he tricking himself mentally into believing there is a difference?
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The subject of the article (Dr Sean Olive) has been doing research into actual perceivable differences in audio reproduction - he wrote the book on ideal curves for headphones based on blind tests by trained and untrained listeners. I read his blog religiously decades ago - he really cut through the audiophile snake oil.
Well, the dB scale was once created on the basis that 1dB was thought to be the "just noticeable difference". Off the top of my head, I think trained listeners can actually notice differences of 0.3 dB, though this sort of thing is going to be frequency dependent too.
The eq-adjustments you'll find online often have adjustments ranging from 1 to 6dB in different frequencies. That's enough to notice.
Comparing settings/devices, it's very easy to notice. Just play some music on your laptop/phone speakers and move the device around a bit, and you'll hear striking differences in highs and lows.
However in isolation, I think most people wouldn't be able to say if a particular sound source is "good" or "bad". It takes a while for you to clock that, no, it's not the teams/zoom call that has bad quality, it's your headset that's dropping mids.
The fact that audiophools reject blind A-B tests should tell you everything you need to know.
https://www.tomshardware.com/speakers/in-a-blind-test-audiop...
A better headphone/speaker in ideal room might be able to deliver better reproduction, but beyond that with lossless digital source and spec-conformant player, the result should be equal. Any fancy cabling, power supply, shielding (beyond what's required by the spec) shouldn't affect the result in anyway noticeable by the ear.