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Subjective audio is the evaluation of reproduced sound quality by ear. It is based on the novel idea that, since audio equipment is made to be listened to, what it sounds like is more important than how it measures. This was a natural outgrowth of the 1950s high-fidelity "revolution," which spawned the notion that a component, and an audio system as a whole, should reproduce what is fed into it, without adding anything to it or subtracting anything from it.

At a CES press breakfast in Las Vegas last January, a member of the "all amplifiers (and digital sources!) sound the same" school of audio journalism made an interesting assertion. He argued that if our society were studied by extraterrestrials, they would find an unhealthy obsession with the re-creation of experience at the expense of experience itself. This speculation was a vehicle to support his position that buying good hi-fi is a waste of money; for the same financial outlay, one can attend hundreds, even thousands of live performances. Moreover, this anti-high-end writer suggested that ETs would consider our quest for better music reproduction a bizarre folly when the real thing is so readily available (footnote 1).

Though we sometimes take for granted that the basic "language" of our measurements is clear to all of our readers, letters to the editor tell us that this is not the case. Periodically, then, we will attempt to explain exactly what our measurements are and what they purport to show. Though those with technical training may find our explanations a bit simplistic, they're aimed at the reader who lacks such experience.

Martin Colloms (footnote 1) suggests that the traditional ways of assessing hi-fi component problems overlook the obvious: does the component dilute the recording's musical meaning?