Something the subjectivist crowd often brings up. "There are things we cannot measure but the human ear/brain can hear it."
We retort, an analyzer can hear much better than any human can. Which is the truth. But thinking about the question I did being to wonder... Could it be possible for there to be a form of measurement we have not found yet? Is science completely clear on this point? Or is there possibly another measurement out there be to found. Usually in my experience science is evolving.
Of course, I am not saying that the measurements used are not valid, they have helped me personally assemble some amazing sounding systems. I'm not as well versed in the science of audio as others in this forum. But I was wondering if there is a possibility, that there could be other measurements "underdiscovered". Or at this point are we just increasing our abilities to further analyze (as well as improve the actual technology) in the ways we already know how?
Think it through logically for yourself.
Sound is a fluctuation in the air pressure.
In order to record it we put a microphone somewhere in the sound field. Its sensing element creates a voltage which has magnitude, frequency and phase. There is nothing else.
This voltage is connected to some sort of recorder which stores the information in some way.
To replay this voltage we decode the stored signal, be it analogue or digital, and suitably condition (amplify) it to drive another transducer which, this time, creates the fluctuation in air pressure for us.
Now if we look at this process it is clear that, since we can measure the magnitude, frequency and phase of electrical signals to a degree of accuracy way beyond human hearing, it is possible to successfully measure everything about the sound accuracy of all the electrical elements in the process.
We don't know if the microphone position was well chosen, or whether the headphones or speakers creating the pressure fluctuation at our ears accurately but that has nothing to do with the electronic chain.
So we can't judge how accurate a recording is, or any of the manipulations the engineers make up to the point at which the recording is released.
We can't judge how precisely the pressure fluctuations picked up by the microphone are reproduced at our ear by our headphones or speakers due to the shape of our head, the position of speakers in a room, the room characterisatics, listening position and speaker frequency response and dispersion.
Everything else we can measure to a greater level of precision than human ears.
So in summary, we can measure the voltage amplitude, frequency and phase (and there is nothing else) of all the electronic elements from microphone to amplifier output accurately enough. The only thing left is estimates of at what level these accurately measured shortcomings become audible.
What we do not know is how accurate any recording is of the musical event.
We are also, perhaps, getting better at estimating the preference of humans to headphone and speaker characteristics but both have blatantly audible shortcomings.