The envisioned scientific research focusing on the perceptual evaluation of audio quality promises to address questions for which experts in the audio engineering industry are demanding answers. The need to know how to determine audio quality of past and current systems, and to predict the quality of reproduction based upon archival technologies, is called for by many international organizations. Though standards exist, there are still unanswered questions regarding best practice, especially when reference recordings are not available. The psychological measurement techniques that will be employed are well established in their application to other fields, such as in the science of food quality evaluation; however, these methods have yet to be systematically applied to problems in audio recording, archives, and reproduction.