Psychoacoustics Fundamentals

[tomtoo]

Indeed. Thanks for your info. Also @tomtoo - glad to see you over here -- you get to cover the section on "Psychoacoustics of Bar Pianos" = LOL

Me??? But ok the virtuosity of the player and the sound of the piano is direct proportional to the alcohole level of the listener. More people in the right mood can even lift that enjoyment.

 

[tomtoo]

But in this song a bar piano plays at least a little role. And i would say the psychoacustic effects of bar pianos are not that bad.

 

[AudioStudies]

A discussion of how loudness varies from SPL is here

Thanks. I have never been guided by a Luminary before. It is an honor.

 

[j_j]

Thanks. I have never been guided by a Luminary before. It is an honor.

It's kind of nice to see someone try to sum up a whole lot of stuff, and it's not a simple job. Don't stop. I'll try to pitch in if I have something out there that I don't have to write, at the very least.

 

[AudioStudies]

Don't stop.

I have no intention of stopping. I have been inspired by those on this site that know so many things. The way I learn best is to write my own documents. Perhaps because my memory was never that great. It parallels how my career went. Some of the other engineers were better at field work and evaluating facility processes, but they always relied heavily on me for the report writing. I am lucky enough now that I don't have to work.

 

[AudioStudies]

Based on the input I received, I started a new thread: Biomechanics of Human Hearing, as that topic of psychoacoustics is well broad enough for a thread of its own. This Psychoacoustics Fundamentals thread will remain open for general psychoacoustic discussion.

 

[Harmonie]

An own thread ?
You'll need more than just a thread, a book or several ...

 

[AudioStudies]

An own thread ?
You'll need more than just a thread, a book or several ...

Indeed. Perhaps more threads than most sewing machines have seen.

 

[q3cpma]

On that subject, anyone got detailed masking curves? By detailed, I mean for enough frequencies and SPLs.

 

[Emlin]

Indeed. Perhaps more threads than most sewing machines have seen.

The psychoacoustics of Singers?

 

[pozz]

@AudioStudies Not sure if you've seen this, but there are a bunch of good lectures here: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/lecture-library.9105/

 

[j_j]

On that subject, anyone got detailed masking curves? By detailed, I mean for enough frequencies and SPLs.

That's not enough information. In addition to level and frequency, you must consider the envelope of the signal around that frequency (inside of 1 erb either way, basically, at the very least), and the time structure of the waveform itself at lower frequencies.

 

[q3cpma]

That's not enough information. In addition to level and frequency, you must consider the envelope of the signal around that frequency (inside of 1 erb either way, basically, at the very least), and the time structure of the waveform itself at lower frequencies.

Didn't consider the bandwidth thing, indeed. What do you mean by time structure?

 

[JoachimStrobel]

I like this thread. It sort of summarizes what vibrates through this forum and can be read in Toole&friends books and publications. I have a hard time believing that all this is undisputed truth and that there are no other well founded (I.e. not crazy or stupid) concepts out there. So it might be worthwhile to honor other opinions too, so that the reader can develop a good sense for these idea while still leaning towards “your” concepts.

 

[j_j]

Didn't consider the bandwidth thing, indeed. What do you mean by time structure?

For starters look up masking of noise by tones, and masking of tones by noise, in monophonic sense.

Then look up Binaural Masking Level Depression.

Then get a pint.

Then you'll start to see what I mean buy "it's complicated".

I like this thread. It sort of summarizes what vibrates through this forum and can be read in Toole&friends books and publications. I have a hard time believing that all this is undisputed truth and that there are no other well founded (I.e. not crazy or stupid) concepts out there. So it might be worthwhile to honor other opinions too, so that the reader can develop a good sense for these idea while still leaning towards “your” concepts.

Some of us aren't Toole&Friends, and more concerned with the human auditory system angle, as opposed to the rendering and reproduction angle.

 

[q3cpma]

Then look up Binaural Masking Level Depression.

Thanks, didn't know about this mechanism. Thought you were talking about temporal masking, for a second.

 

[j_j]

Thanks, didn't know about this mechanism. Thought you were talking about temporal masking, for a second.

All related.

 

[ctrl]

On that subject, anyone got detailed masking curves? By detailed, I mean for enough frequencies and SPLs.

On the topic of masking and distortion there are a few posts from me.
A detailed one here and an example here.

It is of course much more complex than I have described in the posts. There are a lot of things I couldn't go into, e.g. the distinction between simultanious masking (my examples belong to this) and nonsimultaneous masking (backward and forward masking), ...etc.

 

[AudioStudies]

I like this thread. It sort of summarizes what vibrates through this forum and can be read in Toole&friends books and publications. I have a hard time believing that all this is undisputed truth and that there are no other well founded (I.e. not crazy or stupid) concepts out there. So it might be worthwhile to honor other opinions too, so that the reader can develop a good sense for these idea while still leaning towards “your” concepts.

Well, one thing I have learned about the sciences is that there tend to be disagreements at every level, from those with BS degrees to those with PhDs. While I fully confess that I have a lot more reading to do, I haven't seen too much disagreement with the research of Dr. Toole and if by (& Friends), you mean Sean Olive. I have now read most of Dr. Toole's book, and the reasoning, research, documentation, and even the writing style, I find to be top-notch. There have been some questions raised, though. I think someone on ASR questioned Dr. Toole's choice of using passive monitors rather than powered studio monitors, when the many advantages of the active monitors are well known. I admit, that one has me a bit baffled also, as there are many documented advantages of using powered monitors with active (rather than passive) crossovers. If I had to guess, I would think it is possible that certain passive monitors may excel in aspects related to psychoacoustics in a way that no powered monitor has yet achieved. But then again, I think that might be a bad guess (and I have made some whoppers) because this is 2020 and the SOTA of powered monitors is quite high. I just don't know. What I do know, is this post is likely to generate some responses = LOL.

 

[AudioStudies]

How much genuine research has been done into car audio, and where are the relevant web sites? Looking for something beyond what I can find on the sales web sites, but if there are some of the sales sites that have excellent technical info, I would want to know about those also. I have JL Audio systems in both my Jaguar & Camaro.