A Rather Interesting Objective Study

[Jud]

News of a quite interesting study of human hearing at Human hearing is highly nonlinear - physicsworld.com .

[Blake]

Seppuku (hara-kiri) time over on hydrogen audio.

[mav52]

Interesting but it's not going to matter much as we age as we will lose that ability to hear clearly. So enjoy your music now as understanding timely is not going to help much if your ability to hear differences starts to fail you.. Interesting article Jud, thanks for sharing

 

BASIC FACTS ON HEARING LOSS

 

Men are more likely than women to experience hearing loss.*

 

1 in 5 Americans have hearing loss in at least one ear. This is 48 million people and far exceeds previous hearing care industry estimates of approximately 25 million.*****

 

20% of the US population aged 12 years and older has hearing difficulties severe enough to impact communication.*****

 

There is a direct link between age and hearing loss: about 18% of American adults between the ages of 45 and 54, 30% of adults between ages 65 and 74, and 47% of adults ages 75 and older have hearing impairments.*

 

In the United States, three out of every 1,000 children are born deaf or hard-of-hearing.*

 

About 26 million Americans between the ages of 20 and 69 have high frequency hearing loss due to exposure to loud noises at work or in leisure activities.*

 

About 60% of deployed military service men and women have noise induced hearing loss (NIHL), tinnitus (ringing in the ear), and other hearing injuries.****

 

Impairment of auditory activity and tinnitus are more likely to occur in Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans than post-traumatic stress syndrome in Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans.*

 

High levels of cotinine, the chemical that indicates exposure to tobacco smoke and second-hand smoke has been directly linked to higher risks of some types of hearing loss. *

 

Hearing Loss Statistics

[bdiament]

"Gabor limit"?

I didn't know she was into audio.

 

 

Interesting article. Thanks for the link Jud.

 

Best regards,

Barry

Soundkeeper Recordings

Barry Diament Audio

[Miska]

For time-frequency analysis, there's a more accurate better method than STFT/Gabor, called Wigner-Ville Distribution (WVD). I used it in the past to improve transient/active sonar detection and classification in passive sonar signal analysis systems.

 

Gabor limit is also related to filters; filter length in time <-> steepness in frequency.

[elcorso]

News of a quite interesting study of human hearing at Human hearing is highly nonlinear - physicsworld.com .

 

That's great to know, Jud! Well, to confirm it...

 

Maybe this is why when some audio electronic designer genius designs a 'perfect' music listening gear, as a preamp or amp, and his specs are 'linear', or almost 'linear', it doesn't sound nice (musical) to our ears/brain system. Then, by carefully listening tests, fine tune the gear by replacing parts or updating the design, forgetting a little the 'linearities'.

 

Roch

 

PS/ Out of thread (but maybe on thread) my Mapleshade Clearlink Plus USB cable is singing as an angel (then it could be non linear)!

[sdolezalek]

Lends credence to the believers in oversampling, but might also imply that critical or undersampling at any point in the chain between the microphone and your speaker may have already damaged the necessary information in a way that later upsampling cannot repair?

[mayhem13]

Modulation perception studies have been done extensively, and for the most part it's these perceptions that underly our ability to recognize a person by speech, as a baby responds to it's mother's voice.

 

........doesn't attempt or imply justification of audiophoolery though. Sorry Blake.

[Blake]

Sure it does. But keep on keeping on with your unyeilding belief that your measurements are the be all end all. Say "hello" for me to all your friends over on hydrogen audio. You guys have it all figured out. Thanks for saving us all from ourselves.

 

Cheers.

[Audio_ELF]

Sure it does. But keep on keeping on with your unyeilding belief that your measurements are the be all end all. Say "hello" for me to all your friends over on hydrogen audio. You guys have it all figured out. Thanks for saving us all from ourselves.

 

Cheers.

 

Actually ... I believe most of the bias on Hydrogen audio is that differences should either be measurable or can be shown in a double blind test.

 

Nothing in hearing being non-linear stops differences being shown in double blind testing.

 

Eloise

[Boris75]

Actually ... I believe most of the bias on Hydrogen audio is that differences should either be measurable or can be shown in a double blind test.

 

Nothing in hearing being non-linear stops differences being shown in double blind testing.

 

Eloise

 

+1 on this. In pharmacy, the ultimate proof is in double-blind tests not measurements. I personally regret that we see so few double-blind tests in audio. Given that the stakes are much lower in audio than medicine, there is no need for them to be as expensive as in medicine.

[mayhem13]

......and I am not, nor ever been a member of hydrogen audio.

[Jud]

You know, my late friend Fred had a word for it - "stem." Stimuli that don't even make it to the higher centers of the brain, they just get up the spinal cord to the brain stem and the reaction is immediate. I think we're in some danger of that here, and we'd lose what I think are some very interesting implications of the study that do not lie along our usual lines of "combat" (heh).

 

Thought I would put out the abstract of the paper here for additional information prior to discussing the potential implications at greater length later, since I'm pressed for time at the moment.

 

The time-frequency uncertainty principle states that the product of the temporal and frequency extents of a signal cannot be smaller than 1/(4π). We study human ability to simultaneously judge the frequency and the timing of a sound. Our subjects often exceeded the uncertainty limit, sometimes by more than tenfold, mostly through remarkable timing acuity. Our results establish a lower bound for the nonlinearity and complexity of the algorithms employed by our brains in parsing transient sounds, rule out simple “linear filter” models of early auditory processing, and highlight timing acuity as a central feature in auditory object processing.

 

[Boris75]

......and I am not, nor ever been a member of hydrogen audio.

 

Neither am I.

 

Personally I find CA a most agreeable place, and my experience with CA is that arguments that are phrased politely elicit similarly polite responses, even when substantial disagreement is involved.

[elcorso]

Neither am I.

 

Personally I find CA a most agreeable place, and my experience with CA is that arguments that are phrased politely elicit similarly polite responses, even when substantial disagreement is involved.

 

Neither am I, too.

 

We have here (in C.A.) the chance to have and to express imagination, imagination is the only route to art, then creativity, and "Art is our only redemption...".

 

Roch

[Blake]

 

Nothing in hearing being non-linear stops differences being shown in double blind testing.

 

Eloise

 

Agreed, but that was not the point of my (silly) post. My sarcasm was intended to address an overall attitude on that forum.

 

I was really just having some fun with Mayhem. I have written before here on CA that Mayhem is a good guy and still feel that way, even if we come at this hobby with different mindsets and points of view. We just enjoy trading zingers from time to time.

 

Oh, and Mayhem, my apologies. I assumed you were a card carrying member of HA. You know what they say about assumptions.

 

Sorry for the derail Jud.

 

Carry on....

[NOMBEDES]

..........

 

About 60% of deployed military service men and women have noise induced hearing loss (NIHL), tinnitus (ringing in the ear), and other hearing injuries.****

 

Impairment of auditory activity and tinnitus are more likely to occur in Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans than post-traumatic stress syndrome in Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans.*

 

Hearing Loss Statistics

 

 

Double plus on the above out takes. After Viet Nam and Iraq, my hearing is not so hot. Even with hearing aids.

In basic training, back in the day, they did not even issue ear plugs.

 

Still enjoy the music when the tinnitus lets me.

[Jud]

Agreed, but that was not the point of my (silly) post. My sarcasm was intended to address an overall attitude on that forum.

 

I was really just having some fun with Mayhem. I have written before here on CA that Mayhem is a good guy and still feel that way, even if we come at this hobby with different mindsets and points of view. We just enjoy trading zingers from time to time.

 

Oh, and Mayhem, my apologies. I assumed you were a card carrying member of HA. You know what they say about assumptions.

 

Sorry for the derail Jud.

 

Carry on....

 

No problem at all, enjoyed mayhem's contribution as always and had a good chuckle at your post, as well as at Barry's pictorial representation of the "Gabor limit." By the way, Barry, speaking of movie stars, you're aware that Hedy Lamarr was coinventor on a key early patent regarding frequency hopping/spread spectrum communications, right?

 

That's Hedy Lamarr:

 

 

Not Hedley Lamarr:

 

[mayhem13]

Agreed, but that was not the point of my (silly) post. My sarcasm was intended to address an overall attitude on that forum.

 

I was really just having some fun with Mayhem. I have written before here on CA that Mayhem is a good guy and still feel that way, even if we come at this hobby with different mindsets and points of view. We just enjoy trading zingers from time to time.

 

Oh, and Mayhem, my apologies. I assumed you were a card carrying member of HA. You know what they say about assumptions.

 

Sorry for the derail Jud.

 

Carry on....

 

No worries.....varying opinions and viewpoints are what make us human.......only machines think alike! Lol

[bdiament]

Hi Jud,

 

...By the way, Barry, speaking of movie stars, you're aware that Hedy Lamarr was coinventor on a key early patent regarding frequency hopping/spread spectrum communications, right?

 

That's Hedy Lamarr:

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]3972[/ATTACH]

 

Not Hedley Lamarr:

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]3973[/ATTACH]

 

This is news to me. You do mean radio frequencies, right?

(This is a family show so I won't say what I'm thinking... ;-})

 

Best regards,

Barry

Soundkeeper Recordings

Barry Diament Audio