JustIntonation
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I'll take a stab at it.
These thresholds vary between individuals and are also dependent on training of that individual.
There are those that believe blind tests are flawed and only long term familiarity with systems can give meaningful results.
When one has that opinion start worrying and read this post again.
Well certainly blind tests are flawed to a very large degree when it comes to establishing the audibility threshold of certain types of distortion and jitter etc. If only for the reason that all playback systems are severly flawed!
One would need a truly fully anechoic room with drivers, cabinets, amps, crossovers, DACs etc that are flawless to perform truly accurate tests. None of which exist other than the anechoic rooms. And worst of all are headphones. One shouldn't do any serious testing with any headphone yet headphones are most often used for exactly these types of (pseudo) "scientific" tests.
I'm not saying these tests are meaningless but their results are certainly not applicable directly to real high-end audio.
As for long term familiarity. Well first you say threshholds are dependent on training of an individual and then you say people should start worrying when they think long term familiarity is better than a blind test. These statements are fairly in conflict with eachother.
Long term familiarity is nothing else than a form of ear/brain training. I've often found myself liking a system at first yet after more time I begin to identify and pick upon it's faults and things that bother me. This is very common.
I do think blind tests are very meaningful for personally comparing differences in a certain system. But these blind tests will often improve in quality after more familiarity. And I think results from such blind tests are not at all guaranteed to translate to other systems. Sometimes they will, sometimes they won't.
I think the above is a realistic description of reality in audio. And to me it means I hold measurements in very high regard. I also take into consideration thresholds found by others as valuable but not as scientific fact applicable to my personal system and hearing.
This leads me to value using my own hearing as the final arbitrator as to what differences I can and cannot hear in my system, with all the pitfalls this brings (when a proper quick ABX blind test is not practical). To me in my systems and with my ears this has often lead to hearing what are to me important differences between DACs and USB interfaces that others may say shouldn't matter much. But to me it does. And yes, these differences are often clearer to me with time/familiarity.