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MisterBill2

Joined Jan 23, 2018
27,577
The reality is that a whole lot of people are not audiophiles with golden ears, able to hear 0.05% harmonic distortion. Or even hear 1% distortion in the reproduction of various recorded music.
Besides that, quite a few folks do not notice even 5% distortion when they hear it.
 

nsaspook

Joined Aug 27, 2009
16,330

For me, 10% (music) 2% (pure 500 Hz tone), 1.5% (pure 100 Hz tone).
Your ears and brain get fine tuned to sounds you hear all the time. After spending years listening to multichannel narrow-band 3000Hz digital signal tone packages on the air of he HF band I could tell what modulation slot was missing and what type of distortion what happening long before the digital signal analyzers did. So yes, I do believe that some can hear much lower levels of distortion than others, with talent and training.
https://www.sigidwiki.com/wiki/BR-6028
You can hear the traffic and atmospheric distortion easily in the encrypted traffic signals.
 
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MisterBill2

Joined Jan 23, 2018
27,577
Certainly training and experience enable comparison between levels of distortion. And most data streams are less variable than most music streams.

And certainly some folks become trained to be dissatisfied far more easily and quickly than others. That is probably good, if they are employed as quality inspectors, but less of a benefit if they are survivalists.
 
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