22 Jul
2010
22 Jul
'10
9:31 p.m.
On 07/21/2010 07:24 PM, Fons Adriaensen-2 wrote:
On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 01:05:01AM +0200, Philipp
Überbacher wrote:
Sorry to post this
twice, but I think the mail got truncated.
Hi Fons, I'm a fool to even try to answer this question.
But I couldn't resist...
Let's suppose we have two sounds A and B,
and sound B has been measured as being twice as loud as A,
by somebody. In order to be able to say that, that person needs
some kind of reference measurement unit, the equivalent of a
measurement stick. That unit has to satisfy two requirements.
It has to be big enough, so that people can agree some difference
is being measured, and it has to be small enough, so that a multiples
of that unit fit into a realistic range. There is a requirement of maximum
precision (the smallest value we can measure), and a requirement of
minimum precision. The question is, what kind of measurement stick
is being used by that person.
First of all, we can assume that the length of that stick will be depend
on the range of possible input values that we observe, and that we want
to measure. If we want to measure the size of a road, we will probably
use kilometers, instead of meters. In the same way, when our ears want
to measure the amplitude of a sound, our ears will use smaller or bigger
units, depending on the ranges observed. What are the ranges we observe?
Let's assume that humans are perfect, and observe everything that we
can observe with SPL meters. We could do a statistical investigation
on a number of people, and make charts of everything they hear.
In these charts we would see what frequencies they are exposed to,
and what the minimum and maximum SPL's are for that frequencies.
After more analyses, we would have one chart that could be
representative for most people.
I think the word loudness is a problem here.
Afaik it usually refers to
how it is perceived, and twice the amplitude doesn't mean twice the
perceived loudness. It may mean twice the sound pressure level, energy,
or intensity (if we ignore analogue anomalies, as you wrote in some
other
answer).
Subjective loudness is a very complex thing, depending on the
spectrum, duration, and other aspects of the sound, and also
on circumstances not related to the sound itself.
For mid frequencies and a duraion of one second, the average
subjective impression of 'twice as loud' seems to correspond
to an SPL difference of around +10 dB.
I often wondered what criterion we use to determine which
objective SPL difference sounds as 'twice as loud'. We don't
have any conscious numerical value (there may be unconscious
ones such as the amount of auditory nerve pulses, or the amount
of neural activity), so what it this impression based on ? From that chart we could get an estimate of the size of
the measurement
unit. Frequencies with with bigger SPL variations would be measured
with bigger units, and visa versa. And from this we could deduce what
the minimum precision is for a certain frequency, when we say it is twice
as loud. To satisfy the requirement of maximum precision, we should
take into account the smallest observable differences for every frequency
in the spectrum.
now you can kill me :-)
Greetings,
Lieven
22 Jul
22 Jul
10:06 p.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On Thu, 2010-07-22 at 21:31 +0200, lieven moors wrote:
On 07/21/2010 07:24 PM, Fons Adriaensen-2 wrote:
For microphones there usually are -10 dB pad and a lot of engineers feel
around -6 dB half as loud. I guess this are usual values regarding to
experiences by audio engineers. So even audio engineers can hardly say
what their subjective feeling is. If you take a lot of people and you do
lab tests, I guess the results will be very confusing.
On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 01:05:01AM +0200, Philipp
Überbacher wrote:
Sorry to post this
twice, but I think the mail got truncated.
Hi Fons, I'm a fool to even try to answer this question.
But I couldn't resist...
Let's suppose we have two sounds A and B,
and sound B has been measured as being twice as loud as A,
by somebody. In order to be able to say that, that person needs
some kind of reference measurement unit, the equivalent of a
measurement stick. That unit has to satisfy two requirements.
It has to be big enough, so that people can agree some difference
is being measured, and it has to be small enough, so that a multiples
of that unit fit into a realistic range. There is a requirement of
maximum
precision (the smallest value we can measure), and a requirement of
minimum precision. The question is, what kind of measurement stick
is being used by that person.
First of all, we can assume that the length of that stick will be
depend
on the range of possible input values that we observe, and that we
want
to measure. If we want to measure the size of a road, we will
probably
use kilometers, instead of meters. In the same way, when our ears want
to measure the amplitude of a sound, our ears will use smaller or
bigger
units, depending on the ranges observed. What are the ranges we
observe?
Let's assume that humans are perfect, and observe everything that we
can observe with SPL meters. We could do a statistical investigation
on a number of people, and make charts of everything they hear.
In these charts we would see what frequencies they are exposed to,
and what the minimum and maximum SPL's are for that frequencies.
After more analyses, we would have one chart that could be
representative for most people.
I think the word loudness is a problem here.
Afaik it usually
refers to
how it is perceived, and twice the amplitude
doesn't mean twice
the
perceived loudness. It may mean twice the sound
pressure level,
energy,
or intensity (if we ignore analogue anomalies, as
you wrote in
some other
answer).
Subjective loudness is a very complex thing, depending on the
spectrum, duration, and other aspects of the sound, and also
on circumstances not related to the sound itself.
For mid frequencies and a duraion of one second, the average
subjective impression of 'twice as loud' seems to correspond
to an SPL difference of around +10 dB.
I often wondered what criterion we use to determine which
objective SPL difference sounds as 'twice as loud'. We don't
have any conscious numerical value (there may be unconscious
ones such as the amount of auditory nerve pulses, or the amount
of neural activity), so what it this impression based on ? From that chart we could get an estimate of the
size of the
measurement
unit. Frequencies with with bigger SPL variations would be measured
with bigger units, and visa versa. And from this we could deduce what
the minimum precision is for a certain frequency, when we say it is
twice
as loud. To satisfy the requirement of maximum precision, we should
take into account the smallest observable differences for every
frequency
in the spectrum.
now you can kill me :-)
Greetings,
Lieven 
10:37 p.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 09:31:09PM +0200, lieven moors wrote:
Hi Fons, I'm a fool to even try to answer this
question.
But I couldn't resist...
:-)
Let's suppose we have two sounds A and B,
and sound B has been measured as being twice as loud as A,
by somebody. In order to be able to say that, that person needs
some kind of reference measurement unit, the equivalent of a
measurement stick. That unit has to satisfy two requirements.
It has to be big enough, so that people can agree some difference
is being measured, and it has to be small enough, so that a multiples
of that unit fit into a realistic range. There is a requirement of maximum
precision (the smallest value we can measure), and a requirement of
minimum precision. The question is, what kind of measurement stick
is being used by that person.
Not really. If A is 'twice' B, either A or B can act as the reference.
I'm pretty sure that if you'd do the experiment to find out when
people think that an object B is twice as big as another object A
(without introducing optical illusions), you'd find that it's quite
close to a factor of 2. This is because we can easily imagine two
A's side by side, which would be 'twice as big' as one A.
Can we do something similar with 'loudness' ? As I wrote, the
only option I see is to consider two equal sources to be 'twice
as loud' as one of them, but that doesn't work out.
Given this, what you write does make sense - there must be some
'stick' rather than a real comparison of A to B. But what is it
based on ? If most people do agree on some value for 'twice as
loud', even with a large variation, there must be some physical
ground for this. But what is it ? And a related question: iff
there is some 'unit' even a variable one depending on frequency
etc., why can't we imagine that unit ? Why don't we 'see' the
stick ?
First of all, we can assume that the length of that
stick will be depend
on the range of possible input values that we observe, and that we want
to measure. If we want to measure the size of a road, we will probably
use kilometers, instead of meters. In the same way, when our ears want
to measure the amplitude of a sound, our ears will use smaller or bigger
units, depending on the ranges observed. What are the ranges we observe?
Let's assume that humans are perfect, and observe everything that we
can observe with SPL meters. We could do a statistical investigation
on a number of people, and make charts of everything they hear.
In these charts we would see what frequencies they are exposed to,
and what the minimum and maximum SPL's are for that frequencies.
After more analyses, we would have one chart that could be
representative for most people.
This is basically what has been done more than 50 years ago, with
the known results: the objective ratio corresponding to 'twice as
loud' depends on frequency, absolute level, etc.
From that chart we could get an estimate of the size
of the measurement
unit. Frequencies with with bigger SPL variations would be measured
with bigger units, and visa versa. And from this we could deduce what
the minimum precision is for a certain frequency, when we say it is twice
as loud. To satisfy the requirement of maximum precision, we should
take into account the smallest observable differences for every frequency
in the spectrum.
'Smallest observable difference' has been measured as well. It should
relate in some way to 'twice as loud', but I haven't verified this.
OTOH, knowing the smallest observable difference does not help to
define what 'twice as loud' is supposed to be.
Another poster mentioned that he found it quite difficult to work
out what 'twice as loud' means for him - and I do believe that is
touching on the real problem: if you start *thinking* about it
rather than just following your 'gut feeling', how sure can you
still be of your impression of 'twice as loud' ? How stable is it
in the face of doubt ?
Keep on thinking !
Ciao,
--
FA
There are three of them, and Alleline.
10:51 p.m.
New subject: twice as loud
Excerpts from fons's message of 2010-07-22 22:36:58 +0200:
On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 09:31:09PM +0200, lieven moors
wrote:
We may be comparing the wrong thing when we compare with the size of
objects to loudness.
It's relatively easy to say that the interval between sound B and C
is twice as long as the interval between A and B (given the
interval and the length of the sound is in a certain range). This is
probably closer to the object size comparison.
I wonder how well we can judge something like twice the
brightness.
--
Regards,
Philipp
--
"Wir stehen selbst enttäuscht und sehn betroffen / Den Vorhang zu und alle Fragen
offen." Bertolt Brecht, Der gute Mensch von Sezuan
Hi Fons, I'm a fool to even try to answer
this question.
But I couldn't resist...
:-)
Let's suppose we have two sounds A and B,
and sound B has been measured as being twice as loud as A,
by somebody. In order to be able to say that, that person needs
some kind of reference measurement unit, the equivalent of a
measurement stick. That unit has to satisfy two requirements.
It has to be big enough, so that people can agree some difference
is being measured, and it has to be small enough, so that a multiples
of that unit fit into a realistic range. There is a requirement of maximum
precision (the smallest value we can measure), and a requirement of
minimum precision. The question is, what kind of measurement stick
is being used by that person.
Not really. If A is 'twice' B, either A or B can act as the reference.
I'm pretty sure that if you'd do the experiment to find out when
people think that an object B is twice as big as another object A
(without introducing optical illusions), you'd find that it's quite
close to a factor of 2. This is because we can easily imagine two
A's side by side, which would be 'twice as big' as one A.
Can we do something similar with 'loudness' ? As I wrote, the
only option I see is to consider two equal sources to be 'twice
as loud' as one of them, but that doesn't work out.
Given this, what you write does make sense - there must be some
'stick' rather than a real comparison of A to B. But what is it
based on ? If most people do agree on some value for 'twice as
loud', even with a large variation, there must be some physical
ground for this. But what is it ? And a related question: iff
there is some 'unit' even a variable one depending on frequency
etc., why can't we imagine that unit ? Why don't we 'see' the
stick ?
First of all, we can assume that the length of
that stick will be depend
on the range of possible input values that we observe, and that we want
to measure. If we want to measure the size of a road, we will probably
use kilometers, instead of meters. In the same way, when our ears want
to measure the amplitude of a sound, our ears will use smaller or bigger
units, depending on the ranges observed. What are the ranges we observe?
Let's assume that humans are perfect, and observe everything that we
can observe with SPL meters. We could do a statistical investigation
on a number of people, and make charts of everything they hear.
In these charts we would see what frequencies they are exposed to,
and what the minimum and maximum SPL's are for that frequencies.
After more analyses, we would have one chart that could be
representative for most people.
This is basically what has been done more than 50 years ago, with
the known results: the objective ratio corresponding to 'twice as
loud' depends on frequency, absolute level, etc.
From that chart we could get an estimate of the
size of the measurement
unit. Frequencies with with bigger SPL variations would be measured
with bigger units, and visa versa. And from this we could deduce what
the minimum precision is for a certain frequency, when we say it is twice
as loud. To satisfy the requirement of maximum precision, we should
take into account the smallest observable differences for every frequency
in the spectrum.
'Smallest observable difference' has been measured as well. It should
relate in some way to 'twice as loud', but I haven't verified this.
OTOH, knowing the smallest observable difference does not help to
define what 'twice as loud' is supposed to be.
Another poster mentioned that he found it quite difficult to work
out what 'twice as loud' means for him - and I do believe that is
touching on the real problem: if you start *thinking* about it
rather than just following your 'gut feeling', how sure can you
still be of your impression of 'twice as loud' ? How stable is it
in the face of doubt ?
Keep on thinking ! 
10:56 p.m.
New subject: twice as loud
This is
probably closer to the object size comparison.
I wonder how well we can judge something like twice the
brightness.
--
or smelling a perfume twice stronger :)
It reminds me a little about intensive and extensive variables in physics. That may well
be unrelated though ...
J.
11:24 p.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 01:56:41PM -0700, James Warden wrote:
A very nice analogy, taking us even deeper into fuzzy territory...
This is
probably closer to the object size comparison.
I wonder how well we can judge something like twice the
brightness.
or smelling a perfume twice stronger :) It reminds me a little about intensive and extensive
variables
in physics. That may well be unrelated though ...
I don't think it is directly related to that particular
difference. But it certainly is related to a more general
form of it - seeing each 'unit' in its own domain, and
some domains being fully isolated from others.
We all agree on what 'red' means. Because we have learned
the meaning of that word by association. But do we 'see'
the same thing ? AFAIK, that is impossible to verify.
Ciao,
--
FA
There are three of them, and Alleline.
11:37 p.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On Thu, 22 Jul 2010 23:24:24 +0200
fons(a)kokkinizita.net wrote:
We all agree on what 'red' means. Because we
have learned
the meaning of that word by association. But do we 'see'
the same thing ? AFAIK, that is impossible to verify.
Ciao,
This brings back memories of long arguments amongst my friends (when
we were all young and spotty).
We thought we'd pinned it down when someone suggested that the only way
to be sure, would be if humans developed telepathy - a whole 'nother
arguing point :)
That got shot down when someone suggested that the brain would have to
do some form of translation to telepathic 'waves' and how could we be
sure that everyone would translate the same way :)
10 GOTO 10
--
Will J Godfrey
http://www.musically.me.uk
Say you have a poem and I have a tune.
Exchange them and we can both have a poem, a tune, and a song.
11:55 p.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 10:37:23PM +0100, Folderol wrote:
On Thu, 22 Jul 2010 23:24:24 +0200
fons(a)kokkinizita.net wrote:
Yes. This was pointed out by Wittgenstein some 0.75 centuries
ago - you can't prove consciousness.
Even if you torture someone and he's screaming like hell, you
can always say "it's a robot progranmed to act like this when
given the stimuli we are giving it", and there's no way to
disprove that.
Ciao,
--
FA
There are three of them, and Alleline.
We all agree on what 'red' means. Because
we have learned
the meaning of that word by association. But do we 'see'
the same thing ? AFAIK, that is impossible to verify.
This brings back memories of long arguments amongst my friends (when
we were all young and spotty).
We thought we'd pinned it down when someone suggested that the only way
to be sure, would be if humans developed telepathy - a whole 'nother
arguing point :)
That got shot down when someone suggested that the brain would have to
do some form of translation to telepathic 'waves' and how could we be
sure that everyone would translate the same way :)
11:53 p.m.
New subject: twice as loud
Excerpts from fons's message of 2010-07-22 23:24:24 +0200:
On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 01:56:41PM -0700, James Warden
wrote:
A very nice analogy, taking us even deeper into fuzzy territory...
This however is a thing I did wonder about. The general question of
whether perception is the same for every human, whether colors are the
same and so on. It most likely is hard to impossible to verify, but I
have to assume it is at least similar. It's a very nice question for
sure.
--
Regards,
Philipp
--
"Wir stehen selbst enttäuscht und sehn betroffen / Den Vorhang zu und alle Fragen
offen." Bertolt Brecht, Der gute Mensch von Sezuan
This is
probably closer to the object size comparison.
I wonder how well we can judge something like twice the
brightness.
or smelling a perfume twice stronger :) It reminds me a little about intensive and
extensive variables
in physics. That may well be unrelated though ...
I don't think it is directly related to that particular
difference. But it certainly is related to a more general
form of it - seeing each 'unit' in its own domain, and
some domains being fully isolated from others.
We all agree on what 'red' means. Because we have learned
the meaning of that word by association. But do we 'see'
the same thing ? AFAIK, that is impossible to verify.
Ciao,
--
FA
23 Jul
23 Jul
7:56 a.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On Thu, 2010-07-22 at 23:53 +0200, Philipp Überbacher wrote:
Excerpts from fons's message of 2010-07-22
23:24:24 +0200:
Most people have the same emotions, e.g. red = warm, blue = cold, even
if others might 'see' red as green instead of red. Btw. for colours
there were made tests, at what point the smallest visible difference to
the 'next' nuance is. The question about the colour is often asked by
children, at least by gifted children. And indeed we need to learn how
the colours are named. We much earlier have an impression of twice as
loud, perhaps we need to learn this too, but I guess most people, me
too, don't remember that this happened. We do know what 'twice as' is,
before we know what fractional arithmetic is.
In fact people do think different, simplified there are right and left
brained thinking people, artists often are left-hander, dyslexics etc.,
also there is the difference between people who think 'verbal' or
'nonverbal' e.g. by colours. But emotions are most of the times equal,
even thoughts are most of the times equal. How often do we read
something on a mailing list and did thought the same? We can assume that
our brains 'see' 'red' as similar the same colour. And most of us will
'hear' twice as loud for 'usual' loudness and 'usual' music,
speech
around 10dB, but e.g. 6dB, even if 6dB is measurable for twice as near
to a sound source, IIRC.
For children it's natural to think about, that other people might see
colours etc. very different, for adults this is more common for people
who guess that they are much different than other people.
Most of us IQ 80 or IQ 140 do have the same impressions, not the same
interests and taste, but yes, red seems to be red and twice as loud
seems to be twice as loud for most of us.
On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 01:56:41PM -0700, James
Warden wrote:
A very nice analogy, taking us even deeper into fuzzy territory...
This however is a thing I did wonder about. The general question of
whether perception is the same for every human, whether colors are the
same and so on. It most likely is hard to impossible to verify, but I
have to assume it is at least similar. It's a very nice question for
sure. This is
probably closer to the object size comparison.
I wonder how well we can judge something like twice the
brightness.
or smelling a perfume twice stronger :) It reminds me a little about intensive and
extensive variables
in physics. That may well be unrelated though ...
I don't think it is directly related to that particular
difference. But it certainly is related to a more general
form of it - seeing each 'unit' in its own domain, and
some domains being fully isolated from others.
We all agree on what 'red' means. Because we have learned
the meaning of that word by association. But do we 'see'
the same thing ? AFAIK, that is impossible to verify.
Ciao,
--
FA 
9:37 a.m.
New subject: twice as loud
Hi,
On Thursday 22 July 2010 23:53:14 Philipp Überbacher wrote:
Excerpts from fons's message of 2010-07-22
23:24:24 +0200:
The problem is that if you 'ask' people to describe what they see and feel,
they all use the same words and meaning because they where taught since
childhood.
I think one way to 'verify' is to let people express their reception of
something in an artistic way. Be it words in literature or colors and shapes
in arts or melodies in music.
Only problem is that you have to interpret that again;-)
Have fun,
Arnold
We all agree on what 'red' means. Because
we have learned
the meaning of that word by association. But do we 'see'
the same thing ? AFAIK, that is impossible to verify.
This however is a thing I
did wonder about. The general question of
whether perception is the same for every human, whether colors are the
same and so on. It most likely is hard to impossible to verify, but I
have to assume it is at least similar. It's a very nice question for
sure. 
10:25 a.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On 23 July 2010 08:37, Arnold Krille <arnold(a)arnoldarts.de> wrote:
Hi,
On Thursday 22 July 2010 23:53:14 Philipp Überbacher wrote:
> Excerpts from fons's message of 2010-07-22 23:24:24 +0200:
> > We all agree on what 'red' means. Because we have learned
> > the meaning of that word by association. But do we 'see'
> > the same thing ? AFAIK, that is impossible to verify.
We all agree on what red means; red is red; we agree that red is red.
Redness is not reducible to anything else, apparently:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia
This however
is a thing I did wonder about. The general question of
whether perception is the same for every human, whether colors are the
same and so on. It most likely is hard to impossible to verify, but I
have to assume it is at least similar. It's a very nice question for
sure.
The problem is that if you 'ask' people to describe what they see and feel,
they all use the same words and meaning because they where taught since
childhood.
I think one way to 'verify' is to let people express their reception of
something in an artistic way. Be it words in literature or colors and shapes
in arts or melodies in music.
Only problem is that you have to interpret that again;-)
Have fun,
Arnold
11:24 a.m.
New subject: twice as loud
Excerpts from James Morris's message of 2010-07-23 10:25:44 +0200:
On 23 July 2010 08:37, Arnold Krille
<arnold(a)arnoldarts.de> wrote:
I didn't know it had a name. It definitely is a worthy problem.
--
Regards,
Philipp
--
"Wir stehen selbst enttäuscht und sehn betroffen / Den Vorhang zu und alle Fragen
offen." Bertolt Brecht, Der gute Mensch von Sezuan
Hi,
On Thursday 22 July 2010 23:53:14 Philipp Überbacher wrote:
> Excerpts from fons's message of 2010-07-22 23:24:24 +0200:
> > We all agree on what 'red' means. Because we have learned
> > the meaning of that word by association. But do we 'see'
> > the same thing ? AFAIK, that is impossible to verify.
We all agree on what red means; red is red; we agree that red is red.
Redness is not reducible to anything else, apparently:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia
22 Jul
22 Jul
11:57 p.m.
New subject: twice as loud
We all agree on what 'red' means. Because we
have learned
the meaning of that word by association. But do we
'see'
the same thing ? AFAIK, that is impossible to verify.
I would tend to say yes, for if I was in your brain to check, I would be you :)
J.
23 Jul
23 Jul
12:07 a.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 02:57:36PM -0700, James Warden wrote:
Touché.
Ciao,
--
FA
There are three of them, and Alleline.
We all agree
on what 'red' means. Because we have learned
the meaning of that word by association. But do we
'see'
the same thing ? AFAIK, that is impossible to verify.
I would tend to say yes, for if I was in your brain to check, I would be you :)
7:08 p.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On Thu, 22 Jul 2010 14:57:36 -0700 (PDT)
James Warden <warjamy(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
Ha!
Hmmm. You're not a politician or lawyer by any chance :)
--
Will J Godfrey
http://www.musically.me.uk
Say you have a poem and I have a tune.
Exchange them and we can both have a poem, a tune, and a song.
We all agree
on what 'red' means. Because we have learned
the meaning of that word by association. But do we
'see'
the same thing ? AFAIK, that is impossible to verify.
I would tend to say yes, for if I was in your brain to check, I would be you :)
J. 
12:06 a.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On Thursday 22 July 2010 17:24:24 fons(a)kokkinizita.net wrote:
We all agree on what 'red' means. Because we
have learned
the meaning of that word by association. But do we 'see'
the same thing ? AFAIK, that is impossible to verify.
Been asking people the above at least since I was a youngish teenager.
here is another to go along with sound, light, and smell...
Is some pepper dish twice as hot as another?
drew
1:21 p.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On 07/23/10 00:06, drew Roberts wrote:
Is some pepper dish twice as hot as another?
If you define 'hot' as 'amount of capsaicine', there is the Scoville
scale.
Flo
--
Machines can do the work, so people have time to think.
public key DA43FEF4 x-hkp://wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net
2:39 p.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On Friday 23 July 2010 07:21:00 Florian Faber wrote:
On 07/23/10 00:06, drew Roberts wrote:
I know of the scale, but does doubling the amount of capsaicin double
the "heat"?
You can measure lots of things wrt sound and say one sound has double X units
of the other, but does that make the loudness double?
Is some pepper dish twice as hot as another?
If you define 'hot' as 'amount of capsaicine', there is the Scoville
scale.
Flo
drew
12:09 a.m.
New subject: twice as loud
It reminds me
a little about intensive and extensive
variables
in physics. That may well be unrelated though ...
I don't think it is directly related to that particular
difference. But it certainly is related to a more general
form of it - seeing each 'unit' in its own domain, and
some domains being fully isolated from others.
12:21 a.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 03:09:13PM -0700, James Warden wrote:
I do think it has something to do with intensive vs
extensive in the following way:
when we talk about sound waves, temperature, smell, brightness, etc, these are
macro-observables representing a statistically huge number of micro-states. This is how
our human senses make sense of these huge sets (cf. statistical physics founded by
Boltzmann that explains classic thermodynamics). It is therefore difficult for our brain
to strictly quantify variations of these huge sets that our senses can only approach
"roughly" by statistical "reduction".
On the other hand, any discreet observable that our senses can reach directly (e.g.
volume of an object of the same size order as our own body) is easily quantifiable.
Just a guess ...
I need to think about this... It's 00:20 here, so that will be
for toworrow.
Ciao,
--
FA
There are three of them, and Alleline.
22 Jul
22 Jul
11:25 p.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On Thu, 2010-07-22 at 13:56 -0700, James Warden wrote:
Because the impression of loudness is a mix of 'taste' and something
that is measurable. A jackhammer might become easier double as loud as a
enjoyable tune.
When do we feel having sex twice as good? Measurable by hormone release?
This is
probably closer to the object size comparison.
I wonder how well we can judge something like twice the
brightness.
--
or smelling a perfume twice stronger :) 
10:57 p.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 4:50 PM, Philipp Überbacher
<hollunder(a)lavabit.com> wrote:
We may be comparing the wrong thing when we compare
with the size of
objects to loudness.
It's relatively easy to say that the interval between sound B and C
is twice as long as the interval between A and B (given the
interval and the length of the sound is in a certain range). This is
probably closer to the object size comparison.
I wonder how well we can judge something like twice the
brightness.
one little side problem with this is that our sensitivity to both
loudness and brightness is adaptive. this means that although one
could do some experimental work to determine the ratios that lead most
people to judge one sound 2x as loud as another, as soon as you leave
the experimental context, it becomes pretty meaningless in any
practical sense. what you judge as quiet or loud (or bright or dim)
depends an awful lot on what you've just been listening to. given that
our sensitivity to volume is non-linear, it only takes some
pre-exposure to a very quiet or very loud environment to totally skew
the part of the curve that we're on when we try to establish how loud
something is.
to be clear, i'm not suggesting that its not possible to come up with
some useful and interesting numbers by measuring this sort of thing. i
just want to note that they have to be viewed as deeply fuzzy because
of the effect of the pre-listening environment in setting sensitivity
levels.
--p
11:44 p.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 04:57:41PM -0400, Paul Davis wrote:
one little side problem with this is that our
sensitivity to both
loudness and brightness is adaptive. this means that although one
could do some experimental work to determine the ratios that lead most
people to judge one sound 2x as loud as another, as soon as you leave
the experimental context, it becomes pretty meaningless in any
practical sense. what you judge as quiet or loud (or bright or dim)
depends an awful lot on what you've just been listening to. given that
our sensitivity to volume is non-linear, it only takes some
pre-exposure to a very quiet or very loud environment to totally skew
the part of the curve that we're on when we try to establish how loud
something is.
to be clear, i'm not suggesting that its not possible to come up with
some useful and interesting numbers by measuring this sort of thing. i
just want to note that they have to be viewed as deeply fuzzy because
of the effect of the pre-listening environment in setting sensitivity
levels.
Absolutely true.
Extrapolating a bit, that is one of the reasons why an
unamplified singer in an opera theatre can have a dramatic
effect that is much stronger than someone yelling into a
microphone and being amplified to 130 dB SPL. By which I
don't want to imply that amplified music is wrong in any
sense.
Ciao,
--
FA
There are three of them, and Alleline.
24 Jul
24 Jul
10:38 a.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On 07/22/2010 11:44 PM, fons(a)kokkinizita.net wrote:
Extrapolating a bit, that is one of the reasons why
an
unamplified singer in an opera theatre can have a dramatic
effect that is much stronger than someone yelling into a
microphone and being amplified to 130 dB SPL. By which I
don't want to imply that amplified music is wrong in any
sense.
*anything* at 130 dB SPL is wrong in any sense. :p
10:52 a.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On Sat, 2010-07-24 at 10:37 +0200, Jörn Nettingsmeier wrote:
On 07/22/2010 11:44 PM, fons(a)kokkinizita.net wrote:
No, I wish to listen to the opera at the other mountaintop. Regarding to
the German wiki about SPL, the pain threshold is at 134 dB at the ear.
Assumed the opera house is at another mountaintop or in the valley, even
130 dB could be a little bit to less power. ;D
Extrapolating a bit, that is one of the reasons
why an
unamplified singer in an opera theatre can have a dramatic
effect that is much stronger than someone yelling into a
microphone and being amplified to 130 dB SPL. By which I
don't want to imply that amplified music is wrong in any
sense.
*anything* at 130 dB SPL is wrong in any sense. :p
10:59 a.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On Sat, 2010-07-24 at 10:52 +0200, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
On Sat, 2010-07-24 at 10:37 +0200, Jörn Nettingsmeier
wrote:
I know it's idiotic, OTOH when do we ever wish to have knowledge about
objective 'twice as loud'? Did anybody ever thought 'shit, I need to mix
the snare objectively half as loud, but I don't know what's the correct
level'?
On 07/22/2010 11:44 PM, fons(a)kokkinizita.net
wrote:
No, I wish to listen to the opera at the other mountaintop. Regarding to
the German wiki about SPL, the pain threshold is at 134 dB at the ear.
Assumed the opera house is at another mountaintop or in the valley, even
130 dB could be a little bit to less power. ;D Extrapolating a bit, that is one of the reasons
why an
unamplified singer in an opera theatre can have a dramatic
effect that is much stronger than someone yelling into a
microphone and being amplified to 130 dB SPL. By which I
don't want to imply that amplified music is wrong in any
sense.
*anything* at 130 dB SPL is wrong in any sense. :p
11:25 a.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On Sat, Jul 24, 2010 at 10:58:44AM +0200, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
I know it's idiotic, OTOH when do we ever wish to
have knowledge about
objective 'twice as loud'? Did anybody ever thought 'shit, I need to mix
the snare objectively half as loud, but I don't know what's the correct
level'?
You're looking at it from the limited perspective of
someone wanting to mix a recording.
Asking what means 'twice as loud' is probably the wrong
question. But we need to know the subjective effect of
sound in order to:
- develop efficient techniques for correcting noise
related problems without overdoing it at gigantic cost,
- draw up sensible legislation about noise pollution,
- aid diagnosis or hearing problems,
- etc. etc.
Apart from that studying this reveals a lot of how
our hearing system might actually work, which is an
interesting subject in itself.
Ciao,
--
FA
There are three of them, and Alleline.
4:10 p.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On Sat, 2010-07-24 at 11:25 +0200, fons(a)kokkinizita.net wrote:
On Sat, Jul 24, 2010 at 10:58:44AM +0200, Ralf Mardorf
wrote:
Apart from that studying this reveals a lot of how
our hearing system might actually work, which is an
interesting subject in itself.
That's true.
4:23 p.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On Saturday, July 24, 2010 10:08:34 am Ralf Mardorf did opine:
On Sat, 2010-07-24 at 10:52 +0200, Ralf Mardorf
wrote:
I wondered about that myself. I got stuck mixing for KISS one labor day in
the late 70's. All I got for tutorial was which mic/instrument was which
knob on the snakes panel that Gene brought to the me in the control room at
KIVA-TV in Farmington NM, telling me which jack to get my air audio from.
That snake panel was about as homemade as could be. And Gene said if it
sounded good to me, it probably was. So I set the axe & drums to hit zero
to plus 2, the voices and guitar at about -2 to 0. I recorded about 10
minutes worth and invited Gene into listen to the air check during the NBC
portion of the telethon and he was pleased. They were on the road, between
shows and had a few hours to kill, so they stopped and volunteered to play
music during the local break times for about 4 hours. All were in the
famous KISS war paint, which was a little streaked because the local temps
were in the low 100's and their bus had no air conditioning. And badly in
need of a shower from the BO standpoint, but they did make some fine music
for Jerry's Kids that day.
Yeah, I mixed for KISS once. NBD. But it does make a nice line on my
resume. ;-)
--
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
You can fool some of the people all of the time,
and all of the people some of the time,
but you can never fool your Mom.
On Sat, 2010-07-24 at 10:37 +0200, Jörn
Nettingsmeier wrote:
I know it's idiotic, OTOH when do we ever wish to have knowledge about
objective 'twice as loud'? Did anybody ever thought 'shit, I need to mix
the snare objectively half as loud, but I don't know what's the correct
level'? On 07/22/2010 11:44 PM, fons(a)kokkinizita.net
wrote:
No, I wish to listen to the opera at the other mountaintop. Regarding
to the German wiki about SPL, the pain threshold is at 134 dB at the
ear. Assumed the opera house is at another mountaintop or in the
valley, even 130 dB could be a little bit to less power. ;D Extrapolating a bit, that is one of the reasons
why an
unamplified singer in an opera theatre can have a dramatic
effect that is much stronger than someone yelling into a
microphone and being amplified to 130 dB SPL. By which I
don't want to imply that amplified music is wrong in any
sense.
*anything* at 130 dB SPL is wrong in any sense. :p
4:07 p.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On Saturday, July 24, 2010 09:56:32 am Jörn Nettingsmeier did opine:
On 07/22/2010 11:44 PM, fons(a)kokkinizita.net wrote:
My personal limit is about 120. If its loud enough to hurt, it is hurting,
and I have gotten up and left many a night club because the music was too
loud. I wore out the first 3 rifle barrels at the target range before one
could buy decent ear muffs, and most of whats on the market today don't have
the protection required. I consider 30db a minimum.
So now, 45 years later I have what are called Carhart Notches in my
hearing, 120 db deep at 4 khz. I blew the hearing tester away when she was
checking me a while back, she was at full scale with the test tone at 4 khz
but all I could hear was the circuits white noise. Which I heard quite
easily.
--
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
"Show me a good loser, and I'll show you a loser."
-- Vince Lombardi, football coach
Extrapolating a bit, that is one of the reasons
why an
unamplified singer in an opera theatre can have a dramatic
effect that is much stronger than someone yelling into a
microphone and being amplified to 130 dB SPL. By which I
don't want to imply that amplified music is wrong in any
sense.
*anything* at 130 dB SPL is wrong in any sense. :p
4:22 p.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On Sat, 2010-07-24 at 10:07 -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
I have gotten up and left many a night club because
the music was too
loud.
OT, but anyway: This is a big problem in Germany. I only visit night
clubs when a girlfriend 'force' me to do it and I always wear hearing
protection. Now it becomes topic again: At those high levels, I don't
have any feeling for what could be half as loud. I only have an idea of
'half as loud', when the acoustic pressure doesn't hurt.
5:23 p.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On Saturday 24 July 2010 16:22:29 Ralf Mardorf wrote:
On Sat, 2010-07-24 at 10:07 -0400, Gene Heskett
wrote:
That is because your ear shuts down with a bone bending to protect itself to
anything above. That bending is what hurts...
So you hearing goes into saturation for anything above that level. Which makes
it quite hard to determine "half as loud" when you don't know how loud it
really is...
Have fun,
Arnold
I have gotten up and left many a night club
because the music was too
loud.
OT, but anyway: This is a big problem in Germany. I only visit night
clubs when a girlfriend 'force' me to do it and I always wear hearing
protection. Now it becomes topic again: At those high levels, I don't
have any feeling for what could be half as loud. I only have an idea of
'half as loud', when the acoustic pressure doesn't hurt.
5:44 p.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On Sat, 2010-07-24 at 17:22 +0200, Arnold Krille wrote:
On Saturday 24 July 2010 16:22:29 Ralf Mardorf wrote:
So, without being aware of it, I know that I don't know the real
loudness. Is it the same for everybody or just for people who have the
feeling to protect their ears, resp. to get out of this loudness hell?
A lot of people 'join' this hell. What's about those people?
- Ralf
On Sat, 2010-07-24 at 10:07 -0400, Gene Heskett
wrote:
That is because your ear shuts down with a bone bending to protect itself to
anything above. That bending is what hurts...
So you hearing goes into saturation for anything above that level. Which makes
it quite hard to determine "half as loud" when you don't know how loud it
really is...
Have fun,
Arnold I have gotten up and left many a night club
because the music was too
loud.
OT, but anyway: This is a big problem in Germany. I only visit night
clubs when a girlfriend 'force' me to do it and I always wear hearing
protection. Now it becomes topic again: At those high levels, I don't
have any feeling for what could be half as loud. I only have an idea of
'half as loud', when the acoustic pressure doesn't hurt.
5:47 p.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On Sat, 2010-07-24 at 17:44 +0200, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
On Sat, 2010-07-24 at 17:22 +0200, Arnold Krille
wrote:
join should be enjoy ... sorry, broken English
On Saturday 24 July 2010 16:22:29 Ralf Mardorf
wrote:
So, without being aware of it, I know that I don't know the real
loudness. Is it the same for everybody or just for people who have the
feeling to protect their ears, resp. to get out of this loudness hell?
A lot of people 'join' this hell. What's about those people?
- Ralf On Sat, 2010-07-24 at 10:07 -0400, Gene Heskett
wrote:
That is because your ear shuts down with a bone bending to protect itself to
anything above. That bending is what hurts...
So you hearing goes into saturation for anything above that level. Which makes
it quite hard to determine "half as loud" when you don't know how loud it
really is...
Have fun,
Arnold I have gotten up and left many a night club
because the music was too
loud.
OT, but anyway: This is a big problem in Germany. I only visit night
clubs when a girlfriend 'force' me to do it and I always wear hearing
protection. Now it becomes topic again: At those high levels, I don't
have any feeling for what could be half as loud. I only have an idea of
'half as loud', when the acoustic pressure doesn't hurt.
_______________________________________________
Linux-audio-dev mailing list
Linux-audio-dev(a)lists.linuxaudio.org
http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
6:03 p.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On Sat, 2010-07-24 at 17:46 +0200, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
On Sat, 2010-07-24 at 17:44 +0200, Ralf Mardorf
wrote:
Sorry for this PS, I try to learn not to write such a high amount of
mails :(, but it could be important.
Does my brain guess the loudness is or could be endless high? Half of an
endless value would be anyway an endless value, right?
On Sat, 2010-07-24 at 17:22 +0200, Arnold Krille
wrote:
join should be enjoy ... sorry, broken English On Saturday 24 July 2010 16:22:29 Ralf Mardorf
wrote:
So, without being aware of it, I know that I don't know the real
loudness. Is it the same for everybody or just for people who have the
feeling to protect their ears, resp. to get out of this loudness hell?
A lot of people 'join' this hell. What's about those people?
- Ralf On Sat, 2010-07-24 at 10:07 -0400, Gene Heskett
wrote:
> I have gotten up and left many a night club because the music was too
> loud.
OT, but anyway: This is a big problem in Germany. I only visit night
clubs when a girlfriend 'force' me to do it and I always wear hearing
protection. Now it becomes topic again: At those high levels, I don't
have any feeling for what could be half as loud. I only have an idea of
'half as loud', when the acoustic pressure doesn't hurt.
That is because your ear shuts down with a bone bending to protect itself to
anything above. That bending is what hurts...
So you hearing goes into saturation for anything above that level. Which makes
it quite hard to determine "half as loud" when you don't know how loud it
really is...
Have fun,
Arnold
6:03 p.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On Saturday, July 24, 2010 12:02:40 pm Ralf Mardorf did opine:
On Sat, 2010-07-24 at 17:22 +0200, Arnold Krille
wrote:
I think many of them use it as an anesthetic.
On Saturday 24 July 2010 16:22:29 Ralf Mardorf
wrote:
So, without being aware of it, I know that I don't know the real
loudness. Is it the same for everybody or just for people who have the
feeling to protect their ears, resp. to get out of this loudness hell?
A lot of people 'join' this hell. What's about those people? On Sat, 2010-07-24 at 10:07 -0400, Gene Heskett
wrote:
That is because your ear shuts down with a bone bending to protect
itself to anything above. That bending is what hurts...
So you hearing goes into saturation for anything above that level.
Which makes it quite hard to determine "half as loud" when you don't
know how loud it really is...
Have fun,
Arnold I have gotten up and left many a night club
because the music was
too loud.
OT, but anyway: This is a big problem in Germany. I only visit night
clubs when a girlfriend 'force' me to do it and I always wear
hearing protection. Now it becomes topic again: At those high
levels, I don't have any feeling for what could be half as loud. I
only have an idea of 'half as loud', when the acoustic pressure
doesn't hurt.
- Ralf
_______________________________________________
Linux-audio-dev mailing list
Linux-audio-dev(a)lists.linuxaudio.org
http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
--
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Ain't nothin' an old man can do for me but bring me a message from a young
man.
-- Moms Mabley
6:18 p.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On Sat, 24 Jul 2010 12:03:15 -0400
Gene Heskett <gene.heskett(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Saturday, July 24, 2010 12:02:40 pm Ralf Mardorf
did opine:
yes, especially if coupled with drugs which seems to me to be an
increasing trend
renato
On Sat, 2010-07-24 at 17:22 +0200, Arnold Krille
wrote:
I think many of them use it as an anesthetic. On Saturday 24 July 2010 16:22:29 Ralf Mardorf
wrote:
So, without being aware of it, I know that I don't know the real
loudness. Is it the same for everybody or just for people who have
the feeling to protect their ears, resp. to get out of this
loudness hell?
A lot of people 'join' this hell. What's about those people? On Sat, 2010-07-24 at 10:07 -0400, Gene Heskett
wrote:
> I have gotten up and left many a night club because the music
> was too loud.
OT, but anyway: This is a big problem in Germany. I only visit
night clubs when a girlfriend 'force' me to do it and I always
wear hearing protection. Now it becomes topic again: At those
high levels, I don't have any feeling for what could be half as
loud. I only have an idea of 'half as loud', when the acoustic
pressure doesn't hurt.
That is because your ear shuts down with a bone bending to protect
itself to anything above. That bending is what hurts...
So you hearing goes into saturation for anything above that level.
Which makes it quite hard to determine "half as loud" when you
don't know how loud it really is...
Have fun,
Arnold
6:31 p.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On Sat, 2010-07-24 at 18:16 +0200, Renato wrote:
On Sat, 24 Jul 2010 12:03:15 -0400
Gene Heskett <gene.heskett(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Before I enter a night club, forced by a girlfriend, I do smoke some
green tobacco cigarettes myself and I anyway can't stand this insane
loudness. Without smoking this kind of tobacco first, I would kill the
DJ + bouncers. I wounder about the German regulatory agency, they should
close all those night clubs.
On Saturday, July 24, 2010 12:02:40 pm Ralf
Mardorf did opine:
yes, especially if coupled with drugs which seems to me to be an
increasing trend
renato On Sat, 2010-07-24 at 17:22 +0200, Arnold Krille
wrote:
I think many of them use it as an anesthetic. On Saturday 24 July 2010 16:22:29 Ralf Mardorf
wrote:
> On Sat, 2010-07-24 at 10:07 -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > I have gotten up and left many a night club because the music
> > was too loud.
>
> OT, but anyway: This is a big problem in Germany. I only visit
> night clubs when a girlfriend 'force' me to do it and I always
> wear hearing protection. Now it becomes topic again: At those
> high levels, I don't have any feeling for what could be half as
> loud. I only have an idea of 'half as loud', when the acoustic
> pressure doesn't hurt.
That is because your ear shuts down with a bone bending to protect
itself to anything above. That bending is what hurts...
So you hearing goes into saturation for anything above that level.
Which makes it quite hard to determine "half as loud" when you
don't know how loud it really is...
Have fun,
Arnold
So, without being aware of it, I know that I don't know the real
loudness. Is it the same for everybody or just for people who have
the feeling to protect their ears, resp. to get out of this
loudness hell?
A lot of people 'join' this hell. What's about those people?
6:34 p.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On Saturday, July 24, 2010 12:31:32 pm Renato did opine:
On Sat, 24 Jul 2010 12:03:15 -0400
Gene Heskett <gene.heskett(a)gmail.com> wrote:
And that, in and of itself, is a scathing indictment of our society today.
People should not have to reduce themselves to an un-thinking, alcohol or
drug addled state in order to 'have fun'.
--
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
New Hampshire law forbids you to tap your feet, nod your head, or in
any way keep time to the music in a tavern, restaurant, or cafe.
On Saturday, July 24, 2010 12:02:40 pm Ralf
Mardorf did opine:
yes, especially if coupled with drugs which seems to me to be an
increasing trend
renato On Sat, 2010-07-24 at 17:22 +0200, Arnold Krille
wrote:
I think many of them use it as an anesthetic. On Saturday 24 July 2010 16:22:29 Ralf Mardorf
wrote:
> On Sat, 2010-07-24 at 10:07 -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > I have gotten up and left many a night club because the music
> > was too loud.
>
> OT, but anyway: This is a big problem in Germany. I only visit
> night clubs when a girlfriend 'force' me to do it and I always
> wear hearing protection. Now it becomes topic again: At those
> high levels, I don't have any feeling for what could be half as
> loud. I only have an idea of 'half as loud', when the acoustic
> pressure doesn't hurt.
That is because your ear shuts down with a bone bending to protect
itself to anything above. That bending is what hurts...
So you hearing goes into saturation for anything above that level.
Which makes it quite hard to determine "half as loud" when you
don't know how loud it really is...
Have fun,
Arnold
So, without being aware of it, I know that I don't know the real
loudness. Is it the same for everybody or just for people who have
the feeling to protect their ears, resp. to get out of this
loudness hell?
A lot of people 'join' this hell. What's about those people?
6:46 p.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On Sat, 2010-07-24 at 12:33 -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
On Saturday, July 24, 2010 12:31:32 pm Renato did
opine:
This is very OT, but weed and alcohol could make people survive, assumed
that they are able to stop it, resp. some very known guys were able to
handle heroin + alcohol a whole live, e.g. William S. Burroughs,
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datei:Burroughs1983_crop_b.jpg&am…2043.
"He says: You know, I can see two tiny pictures of myself
And there's one in each of your eyes. [...]" from a Lauri Anderson
album, but much more funny is "the advice to young people" from a
Material album :).
On Sat, 24 Jul 2010 12:03:15 -0400
Gene Heskett <gene.heskett(a)gmail.com> wrote:
And that, in and of itself, is a scathing indictment of our society today.
People should not have to reduce themselves to an un-thinking, alcohol or
drug addled state in order to 'have fun'. On Saturday, July 24, 2010 12:02:40 pm Ralf
Mardorf did opine:
yes, especially if coupled with drugs which seems to me to be an
increasing trend
renato On Sat, 2010-07-24 at 17:22 +0200, Arnold Krille
wrote:
> On Saturday 24 July 2010 16:22:29 Ralf Mardorf wrote:
> > On Sat, 2010-07-24 at 10:07 -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > > I have gotten up and left many a night club because the music
> > > was too loud.
> >
> > OT, but anyway: This is a big problem in Germany. I only visit
> > night clubs when a girlfriend 'force' me to do it and I always
> > wear hearing protection. Now it becomes topic again: At those
> > high levels, I don't have any feeling for what could be half as
> > loud. I only have an idea of 'half as loud', when the acoustic
> > pressure doesn't hurt.
>
> That is because your ear shuts down with a bone bending to protect
> itself to anything above. That bending is what hurts...
> So you hearing goes into saturation for anything above that level.
> Which makes it quite hard to determine "half as loud" when you
> don't know how loud it really is...
>
> Have fun,
>
> Arnold
So, without being aware of it, I know that I don't know the real
loudness. Is it the same for everybody or just for people who have
the feeling to protect their ears, resp. to get out of this
loudness hell?
A lot of people 'join' this hell. What's about those people?
I think many of them use it as an anesthetic. 
22 Jul
22 Jul
11:13 p.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 10:50:58PM +0200, Philipp Überbacher wrote:
We may be comparing the wrong thing when we compare
with the size of
objects to loudness.
Indeed. I did not mention the visual analogy to suggest
that the two domains are similar - rather to point out
they are not. Something that works for one of them does
not for the other.
I wonder how well we can judge something like twice
the
brightness.
Same problem. I gues we can't. Or that whatever value
of 'double' we arrive at will be without meaning.
My guess so far, but I have *NO* scientific evidence at
all to support it, just some intuition, is that human
perception of loudness of a sound is somehow related to
the extent that a particular sound does prevent us to
detect other known sounds, i.e. to masking effects.
CIao,
--
FA
There are three of them, and Alleline.
11:49 p.m.
New subject: twice as loud
Excerpts from fons's message of 2010-07-22 23:13:45 +0200:
Interesting idea. From the little I read about masking it is a complex
thing as well, frequency, SPL, time between sounds, all that and
possibly more matters. We could think about what makes judging twice the
loudness more difficult and maybe find a relation to another phenomenon
this way. The limits of hearing apply to everything, but what about
factors like the time between two sounds or the length of the sounds?
--
Regards,
Philipp
--
"Wir stehen selbst enttäuscht und sehn betroffen / Den Vorhang zu und alle Fragen
offen." Bertolt Brecht, Der gute Mensch von Sezuan
On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 10:50:58PM +0200, Philipp
Überbacher wrote:
What I tried to say is that there might be different cases in each
domain, some of which may be similar to a case in another domain.
We may be comparing the wrong thing when we
compare with the size of
objects to loudness.
Indeed. I did not mention the visual analogy to suggest
that the two domains are similar - rather to point out
they are not. Something that works for one of them does
not for the other. I wonder how
well we can judge something like twice the
brightness.
Same problem. I gues we can't. Or that whatever value
of 'double' we arrive at will be without meaning.
My guess so far, but I have *NO* scientific evidence at
all to support it, just some intuition, is that human
perception of loudness of a sound is somehow related to
the extent that a particular sound does prevent us to
detect other known sounds, i.e. to masking effects.
CIao,
23 Jul
23 Jul
12:19 a.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 11:49:03PM +0200, Philipp Überbacher wrote:
Interesting idea. From the little I read about masking
it is a complex
thing as well, frequency, SPL, time between sounds, all that and
possibly more matters.
Which makes perceptual coding an interesting domain...
We could think about what makes judging twice the
loudness more difficult and maybe find a relation to another phenomenon
this way. The limits of hearing apply to everything, but what about
factors like the time between two sounds or the length of the sounds?
All of these affect both masking and loudness.
Ciao,
--
FA
There are three of them, and Alleline.
11:34 a.m.
New subject: twice as loud
Excerpts from fons's message of 2010-07-23 00:18:59 +0200:
On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 11:49:03PM +0200, Philipp
Überbacher wrote:
Yep, but maybe some of the other possible factors match one phenomenon
but not the other.
May I ask why you used 10*log(2/1) in your two person example?
Do nearfield effects matter?
--
Regards,
Philipp
--
"Wir stehen selbst enttäuscht und sehn betroffen / Den Vorhang zu und alle Fragen
offen." Bertolt Brecht, Der gute Mensch von Sezuan
Interesting idea. From the little I read about
masking it is a complex
thing as well, frequency, SPL, time between sounds, all that and
possibly more matters.
Which makes perceptual coding an interesting domain...
We could think about what makes judging twice
the
loudness more difficult and maybe find a relation to another phenomenon
this way. The limits of hearing apply to everything, but what about
factors like the time between two sounds or the length of the sounds?
All of these affect both masking and loudness.
Ciao,
12:13 p.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 11:34:43AM +0200, Philipp Überbacher wrote:
Yep, but maybe some of the other possible factors match one phenomenon
but not the other.
Indeed. As I said, this relation between 'loudness' and masking
is pure conjecture, I have no hard arguments pro.
We could think about what makes judging twice the
loudness more difficult and maybe find a relation to another phenomenon
this way. The limits of hearing apply to everything, but what about
factors like the time between two sounds or the length of the sounds?
All of these affect both masking and loudness. May I ask why you used 10*log(2/1) in your two person
example?
You mean why power and not amplitude ? Two persons talking would
produce twice the power, since the signals are not correlated.
So if our idea of 'twice as loud' would be determined by such
experiences (but it clearly isn't), it would refer to power.
Do nearfield effects matter?
Probably yes, but don't ask me how !
Joern's remark that the phrase 'twice as loud' doesn't make
sense is to the point. We only accept it because it is 'well-
formed' at the language level. But there is no a priori
numerical value for loudness (indeed we are trying to find
one !), so 'doubling' it is in fact undefined.
Ciao,
--
FA
There are three of them, and Alleline.
2:20 p.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On Friday 23 July 2010 12:13:32 fons(a)kokkinizita.net wrote:
On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 11:34:43AM +0200, Philipp
Überbacher wrote:
But if two people talking is power because their talking is uncorrelated (even
if they speak about the same thing:), then making a PA louder (twice as loud
as before) would be an amplitude thing as it is correlated. No?
Arnold
May I ask why you used 10*log(2/1) in your two
person example?
You mean why power and not amplitude ? Two persons talking would
produce twice the power, since the signals are not correlated.
So if our idea of 'twice as loud' would be determined by such
experiences (but it clearly isn't), it would refer to power.
6:57 p.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 02:20:02PM +0200, Arnold Krille wrote:
But if two people talking is power because their
talking is uncorrelated (even
if they speak about the same thing:), then making a PA louder (twice as loud
as before) would be an amplitude thing as it is correlated. No?
Assuming you can find some gain factor that your test listeners
would agree on to call 'double', then that will correspond to
some amplitude ratio R and a power ratio R^2. It doesn't matter
wich one you use. The important thing here is that your test is
measuring the subjective loudness effect of playing back the
*same* sound at different levels, as opposed to increasing the
level by adding other sounds.
I guess that if you ask people to adjust the levels of two
similar sounds until one seems 'double as loud' as the other,
what they do is choose some ratio that they feel comfortable
with calling 'double' in everyday parlance. I doubt very much
if such a choice would be consistent with their choice for
other (bigger) loudness ratios.
For example if you find that for the your listeners 'twice
as loud' means +10dB, and then you'd play two sounds with a
difference of 40dB, would they experience that as '16 times
as loud' ? I doubt if they would even be able say if it is
8 or 32 times.
There is another consequence of calling some dB difference
'twice as loud'. If the result is consistent (in the above
sense), it means that our perception of loudness is *not*
logarithmic as it is often described to be: if it were,
a change of a fixed number of dB would correspond to a
constant subjective *difference*, and not to a constant
ratio such as 2:1. For example, the classical +10dB for
double loudness means that L = c * P^0.3, L = loudness,
P sound power, and c some constant. This is a power law,
not a logarithmic one.
If 'twice as loud' would correspond to +6dB, that would
actually mean that loudness is a *linear* function of
sound pressure...
All this makes me think that the whole concept of 'twice
as loud' is meaningless, and where it has been used it
is a bad name for something else.
Ciao,
--
FA
There are three of them, and Alleline.
4:04 p.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On Fri, 2010-07-23 at 12:13 +0200, fons(a)kokkinizita.net wrote:
On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 11:34:43AM +0200, Philipp
Überbacher wrote:
Yep, but maybe some of the other possible factors match one phenomenon
but not the other.
Indeed. As I said, this relation between 'loudness' and masking
is pure conjecture, I have no hard arguments pro.
If parents want their children to play the music half as loud, the
parents usually have a perfect idea of what half as loud is, it quiet
often differs to the idea of the children.
We could think about what makes judging twice the
loudness more difficult and maybe find a relation to another phenomenon
this way. The limits of hearing apply to everything, but what about
factors like the time between two sounds or the length of the sounds?
All of these affect both masking and loudness. May I ask why you used 10*log(2/1) in your two
person example?
You mean why power and not amplitude ? Two persons talking would
produce twice the power, since the signals are not correlated.
So if our idea of 'twice as loud' would be determined by such
experiences (but it clearly isn't), it would refer to power.
Do nearfield effects matter?
Probably yes, but don't ask me how !
Joern's remark that the phrase 'twice as loud' doesn't make
sense is to the point. We only accept it because it is 'well-
formed' at the language level. But there is no a priori
numerical value for loudness (indeed we are trying to find
one !), so 'doubling' it is in fact undefined.
Ciao,
4:09 p.m.
New subject: twice as loud
Excerpts from Ralf Mardorf's message of 2010-07-23 16:04:17 +0200:
On Fri, 2010-07-23 at 12:13 +0200,
fons(a)kokkinizita.net wrote:
That is a very nice example indeed. I guess in many cases the parents
would use a different wording, which would add the inaccuracy of natural
languages to the problem.
--
Regards,
Philipp
--
"Wir stehen selbst enttäuscht und sehn betroffen / Den Vorhang zu und alle Fragen
offen." Bertolt Brecht, Der gute Mensch von Sezuan
On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 11:34:43AM +0200, Philipp
Überbacher wrote:
Indeed. As I said, this relation between 'loudness' and masking
is pure conjecture, I have no hard arguments pro.
If parents want their children to play the music half as loud, the
parents usually have a perfect idea of what half as loud is, it quiet
often differs to the idea of the children. > We
could think about what makes judging twice the
> loudness more difficult and maybe find a relation to another phenomenon
> this way. The limits of hearing apply to everything, but what about
> factors like the time between two sounds or the length of the sounds?
All of these affect both masking and loudness.
Yep, but maybe some of the other possible factors match one phenomenon
but not the other. May I ask why you used 10*log(2/1) in your two
person example?
You mean why power and not amplitude ? Two persons talking would
produce twice the power, since the signals are not correlated.
So if our idea of 'twice as loud' would be determined by such
experiences (but it clearly isn't), it would refer to power.
Do nearfield effects matter?
Probably yes, but don't ask me how !
Joern's remark that the phrase 'twice as loud' doesn't make
sense is to the point. We only accept it because it is 'well-
formed' at the language level. But there is no a priori
numerical value for loudness (indeed we are trying to find
one !), so 'doubling' it is in fact undefined.
Ciao,
25 Jul
25 Jul
1:32 p.m.
New subject: twice as loud
Excerpts from fons's message of 2010-07-23 12:13:32 +0200:
On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 11:34:43AM +0200, Philipp
Überbacher wrote:
Yep, but maybe some of the other possible factors match one phenomenon
but not the other.
Indeed. As I said, this relation between 'loudness' and masking
is pure conjecture, I have no hard arguments pro.
I had some more thoughts regarding masking.
If B masks A == B twice as loud?
Is it that simple?
The timing definitely plays a role in both cases.
When the masking actually happens, we can't tell that it is twice as
loud, we need the temporal distance.
We also can't tell when the time between the two sounds is too long.
Hence, we need a very specific time window to approximate the masking
effect of B with regards to A. Same is probably true for the loudness.
I didn't actually try to guess/judge a probable masking effect, but it
would be a nice experiment.
--
Regards,
Philipp
--
"Wir stehen selbst enttäuscht und sehn betroffen / Den Vorhang zu und alle Fragen
offen." Bertolt Brecht, Der gute Mensch von Sezuan
We could think about what makes judging twice the
loudness more difficult and maybe find a relation to another phenomenon
this way. The limits of hearing apply to everything, but what about
factors like the time between two sounds or the length of the sounds?
All of these affect both masking and loudness.
1:57 p.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 01:32:01PM +0200, Philipp Überbacher wrote:
I had some more thoughts regarding masking.
If B masks A == B twice as loud?
Is it that simple?
No :-(
Masking depends on spectrum, timing, level, and maybe other factors.
It's a complex thing and I don't think we have the full picture of
it yet.
For simple cases (narrowband signals, simultaneous, same direction)
the concept of 'critical bands' is used to describe masking.
Ciao,
--
FA
There are three of them, and Alleline.
2:24 p.m.
New subject: twice as loud
Excerpts from fons's message of 2010-07-25 13:57:00 +0200:
On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 01:32:01PM +0200, Philipp
Überbacher wrote:
Ok, as so often I wasn't clear enough.
I know that masking depends on a lot of things, and I only mentioned the
extreme timing cases in this mail. We can't judge loudness when one
signal actually masks the other, and it becomes increasingly difficult
as the time between sounds becomes longer. If there is a relation
between loudness and masking it's an estimation of the masking effect
one sound would have over another.
It would be strange but funny if an estimate of sound A just about
masking sound B would correspond to 'twice as loud'.
--
Philipp
--
"Wir stehen selbst enttäuscht und sehn betroffen / Den Vorhang zu
und alle Fragen offen." Bertolt Brecht, Der gute Mensch von Sezuan
I had some more thoughts regarding masking.
If B masks A == B twice as loud?
Is it that simple?
No :-(
Masking depends on spectrum, timing, level, and maybe other factors.
It's a complex thing and I don't think we have the full picture of
it yet.
For simple cases (narrowband signals, simultaneous, same direction)
the concept of 'critical bands' is used to describe masking. 
27 Jul
27 Jul
6:30 a.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On Sun, 2010-07-25 at 14:24 +0200, Philipp Überbacher wrote:
It would be strange but funny if an estimate of sound
A just about
masking sound B would correspond to 'twice as loud'.
Masking appears somewhere in the 30 to 40dB range - which is way beyond
"twice as loud".
--
eins, zwei ... tekno tekno??
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEgbW1FxR78
6:10 p.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 11:30 PM, Jens M Andreasen
<jens.andreasen(a)comhem.se> wrote:
On Sun, 2010-07-25 at 14:24 +0200, Philipp Überbacher wrote:
Right. The two are not related and they're in wholly different orders
of magnitude. I'd be reluctant to put a number on it, though...
Because psychoacoustics just hasn't been defined in a way to make hard
numbers stick. The tendency in psychoacoustic experimental design is
to use discrete conditions (which gives better experimental power) in
order to show that an effect exists. But this way, any given
experiment can't produce results that cover the whole space.
Generalization and extrapolation are limited.
A psychoacoustic relationship is a map between a set of acoustically
presented signals and a set of sensory experiences. Loudness, pitch,
timbre are the three terms used to describe sounds in psychoacoustics,
which might lend one to think they are orthogonal or separable. The
problem of describing the non-linear psychoacoustic map is that
relations don't apply the same way to different neighborhoods in the
spaces involved. With appropriate techniques and *lots* of data, we
could come up with models that describe the curvature of those maps
locally at each point in the space. What we think of as loudness is
just one way of assigning a scale to a path in the space which
connects sounds of similar pitch and timbre.
Masking is an interesting effect to look at topologically. Consider
that points in the set of sensory experiences may be more or less
distant from each other based on their degree of similarity.
Although acoustically, we can have a metric that separates all signals
from each other, two sounds (psychological) may be in-distinguishable
from each other. The topology on this space is determined by a
pseudo-metric in which d(p1,p2)=0 => p1 and p2 are indistinguishable
from each other. This generates a coarse topology with smallest open
sets consisting of sounds that are indistinguishable from each other.
Describing the masking effect means finding the inverse image of the
psychoacoustic map where a collection of distinct acoustic signals map
onto points in the same open set.
Suppose we have two signals s1 and s2, and we construct a third sound
s3=s1+a*s2. For some range of values of a, s3 can be made
indistinguishable from s1. This describes just *one* local dimension
along which s1 masks s2, as long as a*s2 also corresponds to a
non-zero point in the psychoacoustic image.
Well, I just wanted to get a few ideas out there to have some fun with
this discussion :) I'm a late-comer since I had some other
obligations to attend to last week.
Best,
Chuck
It would be strange but funny if an estimate of
sound A just about
masking sound B would correspond to 'twice as loud'.
Masking appears somewhere in the 30 to 40dB range - which is way beyond
"twice as loud".
6:57 p.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On Tue, 2010-07-27 at 11:10 -0500, Charles Henry wrote:
On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 11:30 PM, Jens M Andreasen
<jens.andreasen(a)comhem.se> wrote:
Masking theories used by audio codecs to compress audio signals don't
work for people who are trained in listening, e.g. MP3 at any rate is a
PITA. Trained people (here where I do live) do always here a loss in
blind tests.
Even when using dummy heads for recordings, 3D psychoacoustic doesn't
work that good (even if the dummy head isn't that bad ;), e.g. there's
always a dependency for e.g. ahead and above.
So for the 'twice as loud' issue you should ask; "In wich way do we
listen and understand what we do listen too?"
Before the brain does "math", are there any other senses involved to the
interpretation of the input given by the ears? (Btw. I'm sure that math
is just part of nature and can't describe nature, because it's just a
part.)
Regarding to the topic that there are two sound sources and you are
thinking about a relation, try to imagine people who are autistic or who
are 'normal', but having a panic attack, or try to remember a situation,
when you barely were able to escape an accident. The filtering is
completely different. Everybody of us is able to focus allegedly masked
"things".
Perception, the interpretation of the input by all senses will change,
regarding to the context, for audio even regarding to the tilting of
your head to the body.
Recordings and digital audio virtualization always has the lack of the
experienced context. If it should be possible to completely gather
everything of nature by math for specific situations, there still will
be the context, a situation were everybody brains is able to count the
peas that drop to the ground, after the glass of peas fall down to the
ground.
Remember your own experiences when you had or nearly had an accident.
Time seemed to be slower and silent, but important sounds (regarding to
your survival) become loud, while loud, but unimportant sounds become
silent.
On Sun, 2010-07-25 at 14:24 +0200, Philipp Überbacher wrote:
Right. The two are not related and they're in wholly different orders
of magnitude. I'd be reluctant to put a number on it, though...
Because psychoacoustics just hasn't been defined in a way to make hard
numbers stick. The tendency in psychoacoustic experimental design is
to use discrete conditions (which gives better experimental power) in
order to show that an effect exists. But this way, any given
experiment can't produce results that cover the whole space.
Generalization and extrapolation are limited.
A psychoacoustic relationship is a map between a set of acoustically
presented signals and a set of sensory experiences. Loudness, pitch,
timbre are the three terms used to describe sounds in psychoacoustics,
which might lend one to think they are orthogonal or separable. The
problem of describing the non-linear psychoacoustic map is that
relations don't apply the same way to different neighborhoods in the
spaces involved. With appropriate techniques and *lots* of data, we
could come up with models that describe the curvature of those maps
locally at each point in the space. What we think of as loudness is
just one way of assigning a scale to a path in the space which
connects sounds of similar pitch and timbre.
Masking is an interesting effect to look at topologically. Consider
that points in the set of sensory experiences may be more or less
distant from each other based on their degree of similarity.
Although acoustically, we can have a metric that separates all signals
from each other, two sounds (psychological) may be in-distinguishable
from each other. The topology on this space is determined by a
pseudo-metric in which d(p1,p2)=0 => p1 and p2 are indistinguishable
from each other. This generates a coarse topology with smallest open
sets consisting of sounds that are indistinguishable from each other.
Describing the masking effect means finding the inverse image of the
psychoacoustic map where a collection of distinct acoustic signals map
onto points in the same open set.
Suppose we have two signals s1 and s2, and we construct a third sound
s3=s1+a*s2. For some range of values of a, s3 can be made
indistinguishable from s1. This describes just *one* local dimension
along which s1 masks s2, as long as a*s2 also corresponds to a
non-zero point in the psychoacoustic image.
Well, I just wanted to get a few ideas out there to have some fun with
this discussion :) I'm a late-comer since I had some other
obligations to attend to last week.
Best,
Chuck It would be strange but funny if an estimate of
sound A just about
masking sound B would correspond to 'twice as loud'.
Masking appears somewhere in the 30 to 40dB range - which is way beyond
"twice as loud".
7:14 p.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 11:57 AM, Ralf Mardorf
<ralf.mardorf(a)alice-dsl.net> wrote:
On Tue, 2010-07-27 at 11:10 -0500, Charles Henry
wrote:
> Because psychoacoustics just hasn't been
defined in a way to make hard
> numbers stick. The tendency in psychoacoustic experimental design is
> to use discrete conditions (which gives better experimental power) in
> order to show that an effect exists. But this way, any given
> experiment can't produce results that cover the whole space.
> Generalization and extrapolation are limited.
Masking theories used by audio codecs to compress
audio signals don't
work for people who are trained in listening, e.g. MP3 at any rate is a
PITA. Trained people (here where I do live) do always here a loss in
blind tests.
It's a problem for current models to accomplish compression without
losing some part of the audio quality. Do you think there could be a
better (or best) basis for reducing the complexity and bitrate of
sound? or is it just plain impossible?
Before the brain does "math", are there any
other senses involved to the
interpretation of the input given by the ears? (Btw. I'm sure that math
is just part of nature and can't describe nature, because it's just a
part.)
Regarding to the topic that there are two sound sources and you are
thinking about a relation, try to imagine people who are autistic or who
are 'normal', but having a panic attack, or try to remember a situation,
when you barely were able to escape an accident. The filtering is
completely different. Everybody of us is able to focus allegedly masked
"things".
I agree--but I'll put a little more on the table here. A strong model
is able to describe not only the big trends but the contextual,
situational, and personal sources of variation. A model of that kind
of scope is very far off, in my mind. I would be happy to have a
weaker model that generalizes well first.
Perception, the interpretation of the input by all
senses will change,
regarding to the context, for audio even regarding to the tilting of
your head to the body.
Recordings and digital audio virtualization always has the lack of the
experienced context. If it should be possible to completely gather
everything of nature by math for specific situations, there still will
be the context, a situation were everybody brains is able to count the
peas that drop to the ground, after the glass of peas fall down to the
ground.
Remember your own experiences when you had or nearly had an accident.
Time seemed to be slower and silent, but important sounds (regarding to
your survival) become loud, while loud, but unimportant sounds become
silent.
7:38 p.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On Tue, 2010-07-27 at 12:14 -0500, Charles Henry wrote:
You could be right.
I didn't do research about the hearing and sense of balance, so the
following might be a stupid thought:
Let's say you doe a recording with a dummy head, where it's possible to
separate height differences (from ahead, from the ground). Will it be
possible to recognise those differences when you move your head up and
down?
Upgrade: You might be right, but ...
with the exception for a non-life-threatening situation.
Yes, one day some people would be able to do perfect 3D acoustics for
music, but NOT FOR REPORTAGES. Imagine you are climbing an antenna mast.
The recordings of the helmet camera and of the microphones is of of the
context, no adrenalin etc..
On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 11:57 AM, Ralf Mardorf
<ralf.mardorf(a)alice-dsl.net> wrote:
It's not impossible. I guess nobody is able to note, let's say, 10 000
pictures a second as single steps for a movie, of course you and I
aren't able to note it for just 30 pictures a second. But I don't
believe in digital audio math, on the niveau we reached until today.
Btw. I don't have knowledge of this math, I'm just listening and have
long time experience with doing analog recordings.
On Tue, 2010-07-27 at 11:10 -0500, Charles Henry
wrote:
> Because psychoacoustics just hasn't been
defined in a way to make hard
> numbers stick. The tendency in psychoacoustic experimental design is
> to use discrete conditions (which gives better experimental power) in
> order to show that an effect exists. But this way, any given
> experiment can't produce results that cover the whole space.
> Generalization and extrapolation are limited.
Masking theories used by audio codecs to compress
audio signals don't
work for people who are trained in listening, e.g. MP3 at any rate is a
PITA. Trained people (here where I do live) do always here a loss in
blind tests.
It's a problem for current models to accomplish compression without
losing some part of the audio quality. Do you think there could be a
better (or best) basis for reducing the complexity and bitrate of
sound? or is it just plain impossible? Before the brain does "math", are there
any other senses involved to the
interpretation of the input given by the ears? (Btw. I'm sure that math
is just part of nature and can't describe nature, because it's just a
part.)
Regarding to the topic that there are two sound sources and you are
thinking about a relation, try to imagine people who are autistic or who
are 'normal', but having a panic attack, or try to remember a situation,
when you barely were able to escape an accident. The filtering is
completely different. Everybody of us is able to focus allegedly masked
"things".
I agree--but I'll put a little more on the table here. A strong model
is able to describe not only the big trends but the contextual,
situational, and personal sources of variation. A model of that kind
of scope is very far off, in my mind. I would be happy to have a
weaker model that generalizes well first.
> Perception, the interpretation of the input by all senses will change,
> regarding to the context, for audio even regarding to the tilting of
> your head to the body.
>
> Recordings and digital audio virtualization always has the lack of the
> experienced context. If it should be possible to completely gather
> everything of nature by math for specific situations, there still will
> be the context, a situation were everybody brains is able to count the
> peas that drop to the ground, after the glass of peas fall down to the
> ground.
>
> Remember your own experiences when you had or nearly had an accident.
> Time seemed to be slower and silent, but important sounds (regarding to
> your survival) become loud, while loud, but unimportant sounds become
> silent.
>
>
9:26 p.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 12:38 PM, Ralf Mardorf
<ralf.mardorf(a)alice-dsl.net> wrote:
Upgrade: You might be right, but ...
with the exception for a non-life-threatening situation.
Yes, one day some people would be able to do perfect 3D acoustics for
music, but NOT FOR REPORTAGES. Imagine you are climbing an antenna mast.
The recordings of the helmet camera and of the microphones is of of the
context, no adrenalin etc..
True, there's still even further things that simply cannot be studied.
For example, we know that 120dB acoustic sounds have their own
sensations different from softer sounds. However, if we expose people
to sounds that loud we would cause hearing loss, which is unethical.
Same thing goes for investigating some effects like you describe--we
couldn't quantify those things mostly because we couldn't duplicate
real world situations and in many cases, it wouldn't be ethical to do
so.
To describe the things we can study ethically and scientifically, use
numbers. For everything else, use words :)
10:32 p.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On Tue, 2010-07-27 at 14:26 -0500, Charles Henry wrote:
To describe the things we can study ethically and
scientifically, use
numbers. For everything else, use words :)
... words? ... yes, but add music, paintings, dance etc. ;)
Full ACK :).
Btw. the NAZIs did unethical experiments, while Einstein didn't,
regarding to the results humans win more knowledge from Einstein, but
from the 'NAZI science'. So, it could be, that even doing 'extreme'
tests isn't able to teach us more than math is able to do.
The thread still is 'half/double as loud'. Depending to some situations,
some people claim 3 dB, others 6 dB, while it's most common to say that
'around' 10 dB is half as loud.
I experienced 9 dB to 12 dB as 'twice as loud', regarding to the meters
of the mixing console!
As long as we aren't more royalist than the king, we should dogmatise
this as a rule of thumb.
It's good, when people do research to be more precise, don't get me
wrong, but I guess it needs more but mathematical knowledge and
knowledge how to program for Linux, to do research.
Really 2 Cents (and nothing more)
Ralf
10:44 p.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 12:38 PM, Ralf Mardorf
<ralf.mardorf(a)alice-dsl.net> wrote:
It's not impossible. I guess nobody is able to
note, let's say, 10 000
pictures a second as single steps for a movie, of course you and I
aren't able to note it for just 30 pictures a second. But I don't
believe in digital audio math, on the niveau we reached until today.
Btw. I don't have knowledge of this math, I'm just listening and have
long time experience with doing analog recordings.
Ah! That's just a bandwidth
limitation, but it's a rather good
example for the mathematically inclined. Let's say we're just talking
about the set of sounds that are 1 second long or less.
I'd like to show that the human auditory system performs a significant
reduction in the dimensionality of sounds. Start with sets of signals
on [0,1] that have finite energy and power: s(t) on [0,1] is finite,
and the integral of s(t)^2*dt on [0,1] is also finite.
Q: So, how many dimensions do we start out with?
A: infinite--this is one example of a Hilbert space. The
dimensionality is clear by application of Fourier series. We can
represent functions in this space with a series of orthogonal
functions (sines and cosines), but to represent *all* functions in
this space, the series has to be infinitely long.
Q: Now suppose we limit the bandwidth to 200 kHz. How many
dimensions do we need?
A: 400,000. By Nyquist's sampling theorem, we need 400,000 samples
to represent continuous signals up to 200 kHz. Either by
sampling/reconstruction or Fourier Series, we can show that our space
is homeomorphic to R^400,000.
So, your own example shows that if we increase our bandwidth
arbitrarily high, we can't tell the difference anymore. The auditory
system is bandwidth limited in this way--typical rule of thumb is
about 20kHz of bandwidth. We represent these continuous sounds with
samples at a rate more than twice the bandwidth. So typically, we
sample at 40kHz and above. Real acoustic sounds can have a lot of
extra frequencies above 20kHz, so sample at higher rates to reduce
aliasing of those frequencies onto the auditory band. No further
increases in quality can be obtained by sampling at faster rates.
Regardless, it's a gigantic number of dimensions. The essence of
psychology is the study of mental representations. How can each of
those things be represented in the mind? The problem becomes, what is
the smallest integer-dimensional space into which we can embed the
space of all sounds? This is not a problem that has been solved, nor
do I prescribe how to take such a measurement.
But finding such a result is the *exact* problem to solve in
psychoacoustic coding. It's reducing a problem from a set which takes
a large number of points to represent all possibilities to a set which
takes the fewest number of them.
11:06 p.m.
New subject: twice as loud
On Tue, 2010-07-27 at 15:44 -0500, Charles Henry wrote:
On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 12:38 PM, Ralf Mardorf
<ralf.mardorf(a)alice-dsl.net> wrote:
Full ACK again. My example was for video and film, of cause we only need
30 pics/second, but we might be completely save with 10000 pics/second.
For digital audio there still is an issue regarding to the
transformation D --> a, A --> D.
For my ears I've got some perfect masterings at 32 KHz DAT long play and
I'm fine with every 48 KHz standard DAT recording I ever made.
I'm not fine with any 96 KHz recording done with my sound cards.
So, the reasons obviously depend to hardware, regarding to 'my DAT
recorders are better, than my sound card is', but for the same DAT
recorder doing the mastering sometimes was fine when using just 32 KHz
long play and sometimes I need to use 48 KHz, even CD quality wasn't
good enough. NOT BECAUSE 'twice as loud', but because of the complete
quality, e.g. loudness ratio for high and low frequencies.
I never heard or read about such issues, but I had such effects when
doing a mastering at my home studio.
It's not impossible. I guess nobody is able
to note, let's say, 10 000
pictures a second as single steps for a movie, of course you and I
aren't able to note it for just 30 pictures a second. But I don't
believe in digital audio math, on the niveau we reached until today.
Btw. I don't have knowledge of this math, I'm just listening and have
long time experience with doing analog recordings.
Ah! That's just a
bandwidth limitation, but it's a rather good
example for the mathematically inclined. Let's say we're just talking
about the set of sounds that are 1 second long or less.
I'd like to show that the human auditory system performs a significant
reduction in the dimensionality of sounds. Start with sets of signals
on [0,1] that have finite energy and power: s(t) on [0,1] is finite,
and the integral of s(t)^2*dt on [0,1] is also finite.
Q: So, how many dimensions do we start out with?
A: infinite--this is one example of a Hilbert space. The
dimensionality is clear by application of Fourier series. We can
represent functions in this space with a series of orthogonal
functions (sines and cosines), but to represent *all* functions in
this space, the series has to be infinitely long.
Q: Now suppose we limit the bandwidth to 200 kHz. How many
dimensions do we need?
A: 400,000. By Nyquist's sampling theorem, we need 400,000 samples
to represent continuous signals up to 200 kHz. Either by
sampling/reconstruction or Fourier Series, we can show that our space
is homeomorphic to R^400,000.
So, your own example shows that if we increase our bandwidth
arbitrarily high, we can't tell the difference anymore. The auditory
system is bandwidth limited in this way--typical rule of thumb is
about 20kHz of bandwidth. We represent these continuous sounds with
samples at a rate more than twice the bandwidth. So typically, we
sample at 40kHz and above. Real acoustic sounds can have a lot of
extra frequencies above 20kHz, so sample at higher rates to reduce
aliasing of those frequencies onto the auditory band. No further
increases in quality can be obtained by sampling at faster rates.
Regardless, it's a gigantic number of dimensions. The essence of
psychology is the study of mental representations. How can each of
those things be represented in the mind? The problem becomes, what is
the smallest integer-dimensional space into which we can embed the
space of all sounds? This is not a problem that has been solved, nor
do I prescribe how to take such a measurement.
But finding such a result is the *exact* problem to solve in
psychoacoustic coding. It's reducing a problem from a set which takes
a large number of points to represent all possibilities to a set which
takes the fewest number of them.
11:30 p.m.
New subject: PS: twice as loud
On Tue, 2010-07-27 at 23:06 +0200, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
On Tue, 2010-07-27 at 15:44 -0500, Charles Henry
wrote:
I never noticed differences for the loudness ratio of the frequencies
when doing analog recordings, there only were differences regarding to
the entire timbre, but the ratio relating to the loudness between high
and low frequencies was ok.
For analog I experienced 'good' and 'bad' sound quality regarding to the
'overall picture' of the sound, but for digital I experienced corruption
regarding to frequencies, the 'overall picture does change' (broken
English :( ) So, IMO math regarding to 'twice as loud' has to take care
about a lot of 'things'.
On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 12:38 PM, Ralf Mardorf
<ralf.mardorf(a)alice-dsl.net> wrote:
Full ACK again. My example was for video and film, of cause we only need
30 pics/second, but we might be completely save with 10000 pics/second.
For digital audio there still is an issue regarding to the
transformation D --> a, A --> D.
For my ears I've got some perfect masterings at 32 KHz DAT long play and
I'm fine with every 48 KHz standard DAT recording I ever made.
I'm not fine with any 96 KHz recording done with my sound cards.
So, the reasons obviously depend to hardware, regarding to 'my DAT
recorders are better, than my sound card is', but for the same DAT
recorder doing the mastering sometimes was fine when using just 32 KHz
long play and sometimes I need to use 48 KHz, even CD quality wasn't
good enough. NOT BECAUSE 'twice as loud', but because of the complete
quality, e.g. loudness ratio for high and low frequencies.
I never heard or read about such issues, but I had such effects when
doing a mastering at my home studio. It's not impossible. I guess nobody is able
to note, let's say, 10 000
pictures a second as single steps for a movie, of course you and I
aren't able to note it for just 30 pictures a second. But I don't
believe in digital audio math, on the niveau we reached until today.
Btw. I don't have knowledge of this math, I'm just listening and have
long time experience with doing analog recordings.
Ah! That's just a
bandwidth limitation, but it's a rather good
example for the mathematically inclined. Let's say we're just talking
about the set of sounds that are 1 second long or less.
I'd like to show that the human auditory system performs a significant
reduction in the dimensionality of sounds. Start with sets of signals
on [0,1] that have finite energy and power: s(t) on [0,1] is finite,
and the integral of s(t)^2*dt on [0,1] is also finite.
Q: So, how many dimensions do we start out with?
A: infinite--this is one example of a Hilbert space. The
dimensionality is clear by application of Fourier series. We can
represent functions in this space with a series of orthogonal
functions (sines and cosines), but to represent *all* functions in
this space, the series has to be infinitely long.
Q: Now suppose we limit the bandwidth to 200 kHz. How many
dimensions do we need?
A: 400,000. By Nyquist's sampling theorem, we need 400,000 samples
to represent continuous signals up to 200 kHz. Either by
sampling/reconstruction or Fourier Series, we can show that our space
is homeomorphic to R^400,000.
So, your own example shows that if we increase our bandwidth
arbitrarily high, we can't tell the difference anymore. The auditory
system is bandwidth limited in this way--typical rule of thumb is
about 20kHz of bandwidth. We represent these continuous sounds with
samples at a rate more than twice the bandwidth. So typically, we
sample at 40kHz and above. Real acoustic sounds can have a lot of
extra frequencies above 20kHz, so sample at higher rates to reduce
aliasing of those frequencies onto the auditory band. No further
increases in quality can be obtained by sampling at faster rates.
Regardless, it's a gigantic number of dimensions. The essence of
psychology is the study of mental representations. How can each of
those things be represented in the mind? The problem becomes, what is
the smallest integer-dimensional space into which we can embed the
space of all sounds? This is not a problem that has been solved, nor
do I prescribe how to take such a measurement.
But finding such a result is the *exact* problem to solve in
psychoacoustic coding. It's reducing a problem from a set which takes
a large number of points to represent all possibilities to a set which
takes the fewest number of them.
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16 participants
participants (16)
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