Re: [LAU] Pro Audio? OT rant. - Linux-audio-user

31 Dec 2012

On Mon, Dec 31, 2012 at 4:01 PM, Folderol &lt;folderol(a)ukfsn.org&gt; wrote:

...
  On Mon, 31 Dec 2012 15:39:45 -0600
 Charles Henry &lt;czhenry(a)gmail.com&gt; 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