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

On Mon, 31 Dec 2012 15:39:45 -0600
Charles Henry <czhenry@gmail.com> wrote:

> However, phase shifts aren't much of a problem by themselves--they're all
> over the place in any typical multi-driver system and placement in the room
> matters just as much. The loudspeaker crossover introduces the same effect.

A slight digression...
For a long time I've wondered if the ear, being a non-linear 'device' can
actually detect absolute phase at low frequencies. i.e. if the compressions and
rarefactions were swapped, would it sound different?

To test this with a mono source presumably all you'd have to do would be to
have an asymmetric signal and swap the speaker leads, but how would you
objectively test the listener?

--
Will J Godfrey

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

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

Chuck