Mild hearing loss makes trained listeners give inconsistent sound quality judgments

Evidence

Section 10.1.2 shows that hearing loss well within the range of “normal” by standard audiometric criteria is sufficient to degrade one’s ability to form good and consistent opinions about sound quality. People would listen carefully to a recording through a loudspeaker, form an opinion, and write a detailed explanation about what they heard. Then a few minutes or hours later they would hear exactly the same sound, form a very different opinion, and write a different essay. These were professional recording engineers, whose opinions determine what recordings sound like. — Toole, Floyd E, Sound reproduction- the acoustics and…, 1877

Categorization

• XREF: References Section 10.1.2 elsewhere in the book on double-blind listener criteria.