different people may hear the same sound differently...

We each ’build up’ our hearing and visual and touch senses independently, with a common frameworks supplied by our individually derived and shaped biological package..

The ideas behind IQ are also in the ideas behind EQ, Ear-Q or Hearing Quotient.

To not let those who hear with their own sense training and native ability level (before, during and after basic training of that sense) dictate reality to those who literally hear differently, and at different levels of quality and native/learned hearing abilities.

Ie, the age old problem of: "I am dumb, therefore - you cannot be smart. and I’ll attack you with full-on unrelenting idealized righteousness-if you say different."

Nor is it possible to lay the desire to finalize some measuring structure/method/set of this whole issue of differences, at the feet of measurement. People want final answers to they can act on them and grow into the next problem, or for the tribe to feel ’safe’.

Regarding audio.. measurement of the meaning and context of said measurement has not been fully established as of yet, and may never be.

The enabled zipperhead army problem, come to life in the world of audio. A very commonly utilized methodology in other arenas, like politics and religion. In audio it has no real centralized head of manipulation but forms such anyway, in websites and forums that use this as a central motif--- which illustrates it exists as a central mechanic in the body or subconscious/unconscious mental pattering of the human body as a carrier of intellect. A major component of the fundamentals of tribalism.

Some (as of recent) call it mass formation psychosis, in a negative context but it also has positive qualities with regard to humans having societies and cultures that work for the betterment of all. Since all of us are not at the same level of mental and physical capacities (that pesky individualism thing! "why can’t we all just be identical corralled animals?", cried the totalitarian version of Rodney King), it is subject to manipulation by various individuals and parties. The audio world is no different in such aspects.

In the end, the unherdable individual cats that escape the bag, are the only thing that saves us from the doom of being a boxed animal.

Celebrate the individual who makes your life difficult. If they aren’t there, everything you love and know and want for the world --dies. Forever.

Regarding audio.. measurement of the meaning and context of said measurement has not been fully established as of yet, and may never be.

This just happened, literally, just the other day. It happens once every few months, it seems, maybe a few times a year, overall... that we learn something new about how the ear works.

New research throws doubt on old ideas of how hearing works

What this seems to be saying is that, in our individualism, we can and probably do have differences in the ’group strike’ of the hairs on the ear, re how we individually sense each note or how that note is placed, how it exists according to nerve impulses from sets of hairs, in our individual ears.

Thus harmonics, overtones, timing, spacial envelopes, etc, each different for each person. Some can’t hear all of the nuance that others do and that is probably tied to their recognition of note fundamentals, in the individual sense. This, due to the given note fundamentals normally happening below 1000hz.

The absolute cross connection of all of those cilia or hairs in the ear, vs the individual hairs at play at higher frequencies (individually shaped comb filtering and thus timing and level mixing) ...would bring about a microsecond, even verging on nanosecond flowing time sensitivity to the ear, depending on the person.

Everything known about human hearing via observation and individual reports from the world of high end audio.... says that this is not just possible, but likely to be the case and the evidence of human jitter sensitivity and so on, re distortions that add up to that effect, say this abundantly.

Subtle jitter differences at the pico to nano level and it’s spectrum (in jitter’s spectral patterning as a total, for the given gear, vs another jitter pattern) in digital audio is known to be ’hearable’ by humans, in the realm of high end audio and it’s correlation in measurement. This much, magazines and efforts like that of stereophile, have given or gifted us with --as data points to analyze may go.

The human ear-brain hearing mechanisms probably (one of - other creatures may be inherently more talented!) the most sophisticated and capable conscious and unconscious self adjusting FFT analysis hardware to exist, at this time. those peaks of capacity lie in individuals, not absolutes available to everyone. As it is a sense thing, not a mechanical electrical hardware thing, it is very difficult to quantify except to rely upon individual testimony. ie, science, where observation is king.

One cannot blithely dismiss the observer due to some individual scientist’s or layman’s inability to scientifically and objectively quantify the observer in the given scenario... as science, as an idea, as a reality, as a method... is built around the idea of the observer.

This sort of new data about hearing.. is not what you want to get into the hands of some semi-smart wank working at a company that is trying to come up with the next mainstream wasted space tunes for general consumption on the web. Ie, that pile of refuse artists that have no value except to charm the given youth aspects out of their attention and money. (I am old, this is my cloud, hear my yells)

That such persons might be able to find a way to leverage this thinking into the production and mixing to create the next flash billionaire out of that pile of ’wasted space flash in the pan signer of the moment’ schlock that exists at the bottom feeder area of the music market.

I consider all of the above (in the general sense) to be a given and known and have considered it a known for decades, now.

If places like ASR or others of similar thinking want to live in the past, in their safe zone of circular ignorance as related to their obvious religious adherence to blinkered scientism - is not my concern. My concern is when they project it upon others as an obvious diktat.