[LAU] Pro Audio? OT rant.

[Thomas Vecchione]

On Mon, Dec 31, 2012 at 5:44 PM, Tim E. Real <termtech at rogers.com> wrote:

> Just an offside comment and question:
>
> I've repaired a lot of subwoofers.
> After repair we had to let them run by themselves with audio.
>
> I noticed a very strange phenomenon with all of them.
>
> When you listen to a subwoofer all by itself, the music which
>  comes out of it seems to be noticeably off-key, until you

 turn up the rest of the audio system.
>
>
The way our ears work, what frequency we actually hear shifts slightly with
intensity.  There is a great book on acoustics by F. Alton Everest that
goes into this a bit in one of the earlier chapters.  I am still reading
through all of it, but it is an interesting phenomenon.  Pitch is in
actuality a subjective form of Frequency, not objective, and this is
reflected in this phenomenon.

> The level of sound affects the perception of pitch. For low frequencies,
the pitch goes down as the level of sound is increased. At high
frequencies, the reverse takes place—the pitch increases with sound level.

> Everest, F. Alton (2000-09-22). Master Handbook of Acoustics (Kindle
Locations 1553-1555). McGraw-Hill. Kindle Edition.

There is a nice experiment involving two oscillators they use to
demonstrate this.  The book is well worth the money if you can get it and
read English natively(Not sure what translations exist or how good they
are).  I am still working my way through it but it will likely take me two
or three times through before I fully understand most of it.

            Seablade
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