Musicians make poor or unreliable subjective loudspeaker evaluators

Evidence

And what about musicians? Their performances in listening tests varied, many were not distinctive, but others were. Some had the occupational handicap of hearing loss, others were clearly more interested in the music than in the sound and could find “valid interpretations” of instrumental sound in even quite poor loudspeakers. They were articulate, had the right vocabulary to describe what they heard, but their opinions did not always align with those of “ordinary” listeners. The best among them often had audio as a hobby (Gabrielsson and Sjögren, 1979; Toole, 1985). — Toole, Floyd E, Sound reproduction- the acoustics and…, 1040

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the chapter’s overarching theme (Section 1.4) that experimental method, not listener identity, determines what can be heard — and to the general finding that trained listeners’ opinions diverge from ordinary ones.