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Affect of altitude, and humidity on sound.


NBPK402

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I am at 7000', and I have noticed something strange...volume level required to reach a level you can hear voices at appears to vary by the time of day or weather. Has anyone else experienced this..if so how much does it affect the levels?

 

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The biggest effect of higher altitude on sound propagation is probably the humidity change.  EDIT: dry air absorbs a lot more acoustical energy than wet air as a function of frequency.  (Pressure has nothing to do with the speed of sound--only temperature and humidity are important.)  So if you've got a huge swing in relative humidity during the day, you might be able to detect extremely small differences in the threshold power levels for voice intelligibility. 

 

From my own experiences with different 5.1 array center channel loudspeaker configurations (Heresy-->Reference Series-->Cornwall-->Belle-->JuBelle-->K-402-MEH and the clarity plots found within REW) and many hours of Audacity remastering (spectrograms of voice energy always contain a lot of high frequency content, which is where you find the differences in the sound of voices and in speech intelligibility), it is changes in relative high frequency SPL that most strongly affect our perception of speaking and singing voices.

 

An article on the subject: http://www.rane.com/pdf/eespeed.pdf

 

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1994526026_PercentChgSpeedofSoundvsRH.JPG.9b878e71b58e98fa8217150bfc9286dd.JPG

 

Chris

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I've been in certain recording studios where the temp was well controlled, but not the humidity. From one day to the next, the overall sound characteristics changed, sometimes enough that a lot of changing mic positions and setup was required if you were working on the same tracks as the day before. Some of the problems could have be air pressure changes.

 

Bruce

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23 minutes ago, codewritinfool said:

They were mixing an album in Ft. Collins. CO at the time, and she said that she’d listen to test mixes in the car, and it’d get too bassy on the way up and too trebly on the way down.

 

They were higher than Ft. Collins. 😁

 

I live in a valley on a mountain and experience big elevation changes whenever I drive to or from home. The sudden air pressure differential between the inner ear and the atmosphere, when going up or down, or because of barometric changes due to the weather, affects the tension on your ear drums, influencing the tone of sounds. When the difference exceeds the eustachion tubes resistance and your ears "pop", sounds become clearer.

 

 

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I bring this up, because sometimes I need to raise the volume from -30 up to -20 or even higher to hear the voices. It doesn't make a difference which sources player or movie either. Only time of day, and weather. At first I thought it was me, but our relatives are in town, and they are 20 years younger than I am and they also complained. I also keep reading reviews in my RP160Ms about them being a bit bright, and I find if anything they are not bright at all. The article below makes sense to me now as to high frequencies needing more power at altitude too.

This is not regarding moving from low altitude to high, but staying at a high altitude. I found an article that reiterates my problem here...

 

https://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/590awsi/index.html

 

 

https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/does-altitude-affect-how-you-hear-a-system.113732/

 

According to a post in the 2nd link all the big bands adjust the EQ depending on the temps.

 

 

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