# The ruler's noise floor — the four-seed table, quoted

The article's most load-bearing caveat rests on this table: four Sousa renders that
differ **only** in the random seed, measured with the same ruler as every other
distance on the page.

Quoted verbatim from the listening session's own notes,
`music/out/listen-20260829/NOTES.md:592-601` — the machine records beside it are
`distances-sousa-adapter.json` in this kit (which carries the 0.19274 adapter-versus-
baseline figure straight from the instrument).

```
| pair | distance |
|---|---|
| 20260830 ↔ 1 | 0.19621 |
| 20260830 ↔ 2 | 0.19568 |
| 20260830 ↔ 3 | 0.19103 |
| 1 ↔ 2 | 0.17492 |
| 1 ↔ 3 | 0.16713 |
| 2 ↔ 3 | 0.16854 |
| **mean seed-to-seed** | **0.18225** |
| adapter vs baseline, for scale | 0.19274 |
```

The three seed renders are `20-sousa-seed1.wav` (`fab7a453c77c3bb1`),
`21-sousa-seed2.wav` (`457e33ea8a2b6b20`) and `22-sousa-seed3.wav`
(`e668df2d6a2bec99`); the fourth is seed 20260830, which is Listen 3 on the article
page (`sousa-scale-100`, `c617868d661a4112`). All four share the request in
`render-request-sousa-march.json`; only `seed` moved.

**0.18225 against 0.19274 — the floor is 95 % of the largest adapter effect measured.**
That is why no distance on the page is read as an amount of style. The orderings the
article does keep were all measured with the seed pinned; this floor was made by
deliberately letting the seed move and nothing else.

## A second reading, disclosed

A larger seed-variance figure exists in the arc — **0.19006**, from three renders — at
which the floor would exceed the adapter effect outright. It was measured on a merge
that contains private material and cannot be extracted from it, so the article uses the
composer-only figure (0.18225) and this kit carries only that one. The higher reading is
named here rather than left out, because a reader is entitled to know a second
instrument came back less flattering.

## The three per-adapter pulls, for scale

| adapter | distance from its own switched-off baseline |
|---|---|
| Chopin | 0.07658 |
| Bach | 0.09319 |
| Sousa | 0.19274 |

Sources in this kit: Chopin in `distances-crossover.json`
(`01-chopin-adapter-scale1.0.wav → rms_diff_vs_scale0`), Bach in `distances-trio.json`
(`bach_adapter_vs_baseline`), Sousa in `distances-sousa-adapter.json`
(`06-sousa-adapter-scale1.0.wav → rms_diff_vs_E`). Two of the three sit **below** the
noise floor.