Psychoacoustic knowledge rests entirely on subjective listening tests, not direct measurement

Evidence

Knowledge of psychoacoustics is based on listening tests in order to find out how humans perceive sounds in terms, for example, of pitch, loudness and timbre. Direct measurements are not possible in this context, since direct connections cannot be made for ethical as well as practical reasons, and, in many cases, there is a cognitive dimension (higher-level processing) that is unique to each and every listener. Our knowledge of psychoacoustics therefore is based on listening tests, and this section presents an overview of procedures that are typically used in practice. — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 2376

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to any account of experimental method where the object of study (a felt percept) is inaccessible to instruments and must be reported by the subject. — connects to: Science cannot measure the aesthetic qualities that make music revered — , Toole, Floyd E - Sound reproduction-…, 41; Sound quality is fundamentally subjective and requires perceptual testing to characterize; Blind listening tests make subjective sound judgments objective and repeatable — , Toole, Floyd E - Sound reproduction-…, 87 (+1 more)
• QUESTION: If each listener’s higher-level processing is unique, how much of a published psychoacoustic result is a fact about hearing versus a fact about a tested population?
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 2376

Broader Connections

• Blind listening tests make subjective sound judgments objective and repeatable #contradicts (0.82) — , Toole, Floyd E - Sound reproduction-…, 87
• Objective sound quality models have limited domains of validity and cannot replace subjective testing #corroborates (0.80) — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 2337