MRC01
Major Contributor
Reading about perception in the time vs. frequency domains, I came across this study from several years ago:
https://phys.org/news/2013-02-human-fourier-uncertainty-principle.html
It's not an Earth shattering revelation that human hearing acuity is different in the time and frequency domains. I wonder if it is different enough to be relevant from an audio engineering perspective. That is, to what extent (if any) is audio engineering based on a notion of symmetric acuity? Or maybe the difference, if any, is too small to matter.
I'm trying to imagine a simple experiment that could test this asymmetry of acuity in time vs. frequency domains. How about this: take an audio signal with strong HF energy extending to at least 20 kHz, with transient impulses (not just a mix of pure tones). The signal could be natural or an artificial test signal. For each listener, separately determine the highest frequency pure tone he can perceive at a reasonable level. Call this frequency Fl. Take the discrete FT of that audio signal, from that FT remove all frequencies above Fl. Reconstruct the signal from the redacted DFT. See if the the listener can differentiate it from the original non-filtered signal in a DBT.
The idea: if our hearing acuity is asymmetric in the time & frequency domains, it might be possible to detect the absence of frequencies we can't hear as pure tones, if removing them changes the signal in the time domain (smearing or spreading impulse timing). Or not?
https://phys.org/news/2013-02-human-fourier-uncertainty-principle.html
It's not an Earth shattering revelation that human hearing acuity is different in the time and frequency domains. I wonder if it is different enough to be relevant from an audio engineering perspective. That is, to what extent (if any) is audio engineering based on a notion of symmetric acuity? Or maybe the difference, if any, is too small to matter.
I'm trying to imagine a simple experiment that could test this asymmetry of acuity in time vs. frequency domains. How about this: take an audio signal with strong HF energy extending to at least 20 kHz, with transient impulses (not just a mix of pure tones). The signal could be natural or an artificial test signal. For each listener, separately determine the highest frequency pure tone he can perceive at a reasonable level. Call this frequency Fl. Take the discrete FT of that audio signal, from that FT remove all frequencies above Fl. Reconstruct the signal from the redacted DFT. See if the the listener can differentiate it from the original non-filtered signal in a DBT.
The idea: if our hearing acuity is asymmetric in the time & frequency domains, it might be possible to detect the absence of frequencies we can't hear as pure tones, if removing them changes the signal in the time domain (smearing or spreading impulse timing). Or not?
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