Dear Peter,
Based on The American Heritage Dictionary definitions of "objective" and of "subjective" I believe that even a lifetime of experience listening to music in concert halls used to conclude that a particular audio system and room has the same perceived sonic balance observed in the concert hall is a subjective opinion. The longevity of a lifetime of experience does not make the observation any less subjective. Longevity of experience does not transmute subjective into objective.
Ron,
Scientific related views are not welcome by naturists I will answer in this thread.
Although you are basically correct, thinks are less simple than you consider. Once we carry proper statistic analyzis of subjective data it can become objective. However in order to carry the analyzis the data must obey some specific criteria, the more important being independent data points with no intrinsic correlation. Once properly analyzed the subjective data becomes a point with an associated error - for example we will just know that probably people consider that the concert hall subjective quality is 7 +/-2 , meaning that some percentage of people will associated a quality between 5 and 9 to the sound quality of this auditorium. Perceptual science works this way. This point can be considered as an objective point - if the experience was properly carried with a significant number of independent people it would not depend on the specific people chosen to carry the measurement.
I am guilty of oversimplifying and skipping some important aspects, but I think this is the main idea. Surely we the WBF high-end people are not able to get such objective data - too few and too polarized to be considered independent listeners!
An audio engineer could conduct a frequency sweep and frequency response analysis of the acoustics of a concert hall. That same engineer could conduct a frequency sweep and frequency response analysis of the particular audio system and room in question. The measured frequency response of the concert hall and the measured frequency response of the audio system and room are objective facts. (I am assuming industry-accepted test equipment, measuring techniques and reporting results. Different audio engineers might use different equipment and place microphones in different locations in the same room, but the resulting measurements, competently performed, should be much closer to repeatable objective fact than to personal subjective opinion.)
Yes. A measurement is only valid with a certain range of conditions that must be known. For example if humidity varies a lot, the measurement is not valid anymore.
The American Heritage Dictionary's fifth definition of "balance" seems to be what you and David are aiming at: "A harmonious or satisfying arrangement or proportion of parts or elements, as in a design." Whether referring to a live concert performance or to a reproduction by an audio system I think the evaluation of balanced or not is subjective, not objective.
Your formulations of "balance" such as "nothing is spot-lit" and "nothing is exaggerated" and "no frequency range seems to stick out and call attention to itself" and "nothing seemed enhanced or rolled off" seem to be variations on your subjective perception of "harmonious or satisfying arrangement or proportion of parts or elements."
I also think that impressions such as "nothing is spot-lit" and "nothing is exaggerated" and "no frequency range seems to stick out and call attention to itself" and "nothing seemed enhanced or rolled off" are inevitably synonymous with "even" or "linear" or "smooth" or "flat" or low in variance. How could they not be?
Curiously most times the person responsible for the fine instrumental recording balance, something that approaches such definition, is not the composer, the maestro or the sound engineer - it is the producer, although this is surely a team work.