Since the discussion is pretty general at this point, there is an idea that I would like to explore a little further. Is our hearing really the same except for degrees of damage? I don't think that's plausible, any more than the actuality of our vision all being the same. We are all born with slight differences in our vision. 20/20 is just an average, not an absolute. Some people are born with varying degrees of astigmatism, sometimes affecting only one eye, and some people are born with much better than 20/20 vision. I think that some people have been tested down to 20/8. That is, they see at 20' what the average (20/20) person can see at 8'. And our color vision also varies widely. Nearly all of us who can pass a standard color blindness test will still see better into some parts of the color spectrum than others. As we age, our eyes typically lose some ability to focus, and we may become more susceptible to glare, but even those things vary from individual to individual. And as with our hearing, we can do things to injure our eyes and hasten our vision loss.
Why would our vision be so innately different (although always falling within generally definable ranges) and our hearing be so innately similar? I doubt that it is. I think that the shape of the ear canal and the configuration of the tympanic membrane affect our innate capabilities. I don't know that very many of us innately hear to the limits of human audibility (about 22KHz on the high side and, I think, about 14Hz on the low side). 20Hz to 20KHz is a guideline for normal human hearing, but we may, or may not, be born with those exact capabilities. And then to use a comparison to the color spectrum, do we all hear the same frequencies equally within that general frequency range, or is 5000Hz louder to some of us than to others? Most human capabilities, or characteristics, follow a bell curve. Why would our hearing be the exception to that?
And then there is the whole question of psycho-acoustics. Hearing capabilities as a function of physical anatomy are one thing, but are our brains all wired in exactly the same way to interpret what we hear the same. I'm not talking entirely about environmental influences, here, although they could be a factor too, but of the wiring. The more we understand about learning disabilities, for instance, the more evident it is that our neurological wiring can differ from individual to individual. So, we can generalize about human capabilities, age, environmental influences, and preferences, and based on tests, or surveys, generate statistical probabilities. But when it comes to predicting what a particular person will actually hear, and how his brain will interpret what he hears, and what he will actually prefer, I think that is a very different matter. In large scale terms we are all very alike, but at a detailed level, we may be quite different.
This post is not intended to be argumentative. I have just been thinking about the variability of audio preference lately, and this seemed like a good opportunity to put some thoughts on paper.
Regards,
Mike
