http://physicsweb.org/article/world/15/5/8
I just found this page after reading an excellent article by Jim Lesurf in April 2004 issue of Hi-Fi News. I think that this developement is extremely interesting for everybody involved in audio, as it changes completely our understanding of how the ear operates. It would be interesting to discuss possible implications on the relevance of standard audio measurements and on audio electronics design practices.
x-pro
I just found this page after reading an excellent article by Jim Lesurf in April 2004 issue of Hi-Fi News. I think that this developement is extremely interesting for everybody involved in audio, as it changes completely our understanding of how the ear operates. It would be interesting to discuss possible implications on the relevance of standard audio measurements and on audio electronics design practices.
x-pro
x-pro said:
I don't see how you can draw that conclusion. The more obvious
conclusion is that comphrehension of the mechanics of the ear
have always been inadequately simplistic, and the way the
human brain processes the information even more so.
Though autocorrelation functions are an interesting concept
regarding possible processing of information from the ear.
sreten.I didn't find anything revolutionary in this article. Sounds to me like many years of surmise has been attached to a horn. For many, it must be a relief. Tinnitus, anyone? Boy I hate these frequencies, its like an unstable amp near oscillation.
I can imagine some very peculiar type of headphones to be produced, working on the in-ear oscillator excitation without any sound at all.
What did strike me is one other news I heard this year. They've created auditory substitution of eye vision for blind people. When its done right and well, it is said to get assimilated by brain, so well, that people stop "hearing" surroundings and instead start truely perceive visual images! wow. Sorta like brain doesn't care from which hole the information gets in, if it has visual data, you see it. The only problem was bandwidth, ears are no match for eyes in that regards.
(just after quick search):
http://www.seeingwithsound.com/im2sound.htm
http://www.seeingwithsound.com/voicebme.html
but thats OT.
I can imagine some very peculiar type of headphones to be produced, working on the in-ear oscillator excitation without any sound at all.
What did strike me is one other news I heard this year. They've created auditory substitution of eye vision for blind people. When its done right and well, it is said to get assimilated by brain, so well, that people stop "hearing" surroundings and instead start truely perceive visual images! wow. Sorta like brain doesn't care from which hole the information gets in, if it has visual data, you see it. The only problem was bandwidth, ears are no match for eyes in that regards.
(just after quick search):
http://www.seeingwithsound.com/im2sound.htm
http://www.seeingwithsound.com/voicebme.html
but thats OT.
Re: Re: "The power of hearing" - Physics World May 2002
Perhaps I am overreacting . However it is quite a change from the idea of the ear as a passive receiver (i.e. something like a microphone coupled to a spectrum analyser) to the idea of an active, highly unlinear and very complex array of regenerative receivers with feedback controlled gain. It certainly looks that we need to learn how this active system works to be able to progress in our understanding of some still mysterious aspects of human hearing. It also makes some things accepted as cornerstones of acoustics to appear misplaced. For instance, the loudness curves taken with a continuos tone could be quite misleading . When we deal with such complex and well tuned by evolution for the natural surroundings system we have to be very careful in evaluating it by using electronics methods designed first of all for reasonably simple and linear components.
Jim Lesurf in his article, for instance, speculating about a possible implication on a subject of ultrasound components in music as it is very possible that these sounds which we can not hear on their own could affect our perception when we receive them together with the music.
x-pro
sreten said:
I don't see how you can draw that conclusion. The more obvious
conclusion is that comphrehension of the mechanics of the ear
have always been inadequately simplistic, and the way the
human brain processes the information even more so.
Perhaps I am overreacting
. However it is quite a change from the idea of the ear as a passive receiver (i.e. something like a microphone coupled to a spectrum analyser) to the idea of an active, highly unlinear and very complex array of regenerative receivers with feedback controlled gain. It certainly looks that we need to learn how this active system works to be able to progress in our understanding of some still mysterious aspects of human hearing. It also makes some things accepted as cornerstones of acoustics to appear misplaced. For instance, the loudness curves taken with a continuos tone could be quite misleading . When we deal with such complex and well tuned by evolution for the natural surroundings system we have to be very careful in evaluating it by using electronics methods designed first of all for reasonably simple and linear components.Jim Lesurf in his article, for instance, speculating about a possible implication on a subject of ultrasound components in music as it is very possible that these sounds which we can not hear on their own could affect our perception when we receive them together with the music.
x-pro
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