[LAU] Pro Audio? OT rant.

[Charles Henry]

On Mon, Dec 31, 2012 at 4:01 PM, Folderol <folderol at ukfsn.org> wrote:

> On Mon, 31 Dec 2012 15:39:45 -0600
> Charles Henry <czhenry at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > However, phase shifts aren't much of a problem by themselves--they're all
> > over the place in any typical multi-driver system and placement in the
> room
> > matters just as much.  The loudspeaker crossover introduces the same
> effect.
>
> A slight digression...
> For a long time I've wondered if the ear, being a non-linear 'device' can
> actually detect absolute phase at low frequencies. i.e. if the
> compressions and
> rarefactions were swapped, would it sound different?
>
> To test this with a mono source presumably all you'd have to do would be to
> have an asymmetric signal and swap the speaker leads, but how would you
> objectively test the listener?
>
> --
> Will J Godfrey
>

You design a psychoacoustic experiment.  The case you mentioned is a very
narrow case to look at how the ear discriminates phase differences.
Objectively determining if/how the listener has a different response with
differences in phase is just plain scientific experiment design.
Psychoacoustics tends to have some very interesting experimental
methodologies.  I used to read a lot of papers and was frequently surprised
how clever the experiments are.

Phase-locking is *very* significant in the human auditory system--if
scientists have not found how phase differences can change how a sound is
perceived, it may be that we're not asking the right questions.

Chuck
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