[Dick Pierce[_2_]]

Mark DeBellis wrote:
Second, consider the following hypothetical example. Two recorded
excerpts, A and B, are identical, except that A has some added
ultrasonic component that, over short spans of time, causes a
temporary reduction in loudness sensitivity. Plausibly, the way A
sounds to the listener will not be the same as the way B sounds,
because the end of A will not have the same perceived loudness that
the end of B will have. However, it's not going to be easy to test
for this simply by comparing the two excerpts. If the listener
switches back and forth, the excerpts won't sound different, because
any reduction in sensitivity will affect the two equally. And if the
listener hears one excerpt in its entirety and then the other, he/she
has the problem of comparing stimuli that are distant in time, which
requires memory, which is not necessarily reliable.

The second example, which I am granting is hypothetical, would be one
where we would want to say (I think) that the way A sounds is not the
same as the way B sounds, though they might well be indistinguishable
in the relevant testing situations.

Several points

1. The scenario you describe is one where the two would be
trivially distinguishable in all but the most simple of
measurements, thus it would be easy to test your hypothesis.

2. Given what IS known about the properties of human hearing
(and that's a LOT, much, much more than most participants
in this an similar forums are aware of, no insult intended)
given the amplitude and frequency of the ultrsonic levels
needed to cause this loss in sensitivity in a way that is
going to have an audible effect, the amount of ultrasonic
energy could well be sufficient to fry the tweeters. Thus,
yes, the two systems would sound different.

3. Your hypothesis is easily tested. Why no do so?

The point is this, I am not discounting your hypothesis out of hand,
nor even the possibility that similar phenomenon might be at play.

But the fact is that specualtion and hypthesizing and all the rest
are pointless without some real data on hand to see if all this
is not anything more than clutching at straws to explain away
differences due to non-auditory effects.

And without carefully controlled, bias-controlled, repeatable
procedures that have statistically significant outcomes, it
will always remain nothing more than clutching at straws.

People smarter and with FAR more experience than you, than me,
than Nabob, than Audio Empire, than the various incarnations of
the Scotts, and many more, have been doing very careful research
on an incredibly broad range of human psychophysical phenomenon,
with sensitivities far beyond what you and others have suggested
here. Why haven't they found what is being claimed?

And if they have missed something real, something you think is
significant, then its up to you to prove that this new, as yet
incovered TRVTH (tm) is out there. And without the scientific
rigor to back it up, you and anyone else claims are going precisely
nowhere.

I still assert that there does not exist a single instance of
an aspect of technology or hearing originating in or discovered
by the high-end audio industry. All such claims fall squarely,
thus far, into two bins: total flooby dust, or ho-hum-this-
has-been-well-known-for-decades.

And this will remain as long as the high-end "research" is
dominated by imprecision, sloppiness, purveyors of snake-oil
lakc of skepticism and, rgertaably, more than its share of
total nutcases. Whatever real data might appear is buried
in that excrement.

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+--------------------------------+
+ Dick Pierce |
+ Professional Audio Development |
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