dragonfyr Posted September 19, 2005 Share Posted September 19, 2005 I guess I will stick this here, as I am not sure of the proper category! Posted is an examination of a few characteristics of human hearing, including 'directionality'. In addition, it may pique your interest in the ITE (in the ear) recording technique that has an accurate transfer function correlating to human hearing - without any pre- or post- processing! NotExactlyOmni_HearingDirectivity.4pg.pdf Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikebse2a3 Posted September 19, 2005 Share Posted September 19, 2005 THANKS dragonfyr!!! I really appreciate the MANY articles that you post on the forum. mike[] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pauln Posted September 20, 2005 Share Posted September 20, 2005 I appreciate them so much I have taken a vow of blue for all future posts. Paul Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maxg Posted September 20, 2005 Share Posted September 20, 2005 Interesting post - thanks. Sadly for me it does not answer one question that I have of myself. As might be apparent from my picture my ears, not to put to fine a point on it - stick out. I have always wondered what impact that might have on my listening as opposed to others - in terms of directionality. Certainly when I pin my ears back with my hands the sound changes dramatically - but that might be as much a factor of the position of my hands as it is the folded ears. I dont fancy taping my ears to the sides of my head overly - I was kinda hoping some undergrad or other might have done it for me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
edwinr Posted September 20, 2005 Share Posted September 20, 2005 Certainly when I pin my ears back with my hands the sound changes dramatically - but that might be as much a factor of the position of my hands as it is the folded ears. I think it is the position of your hands, Max, causing the sound to change much more dramatically. However, it is difficult to argue that those with more radical ear configurations (sorry Max!), may in fact have superior or more acute hearing. Just look at the animal world. Many animals have evolved quite complex outer ear structures to facilitate the detection of their prey. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dragonfyr Posted September 20, 2005 Author Share Posted September 20, 2005 Max, You raise what I find to be a fascinating subject. And one in which I was privileged to share in some of the research and in the amazing results. Don & Carolyn Davis began their research into the response of the ear- more specifically the pinnae. And for a period of about 10 years they accumulates the responses of just about all of us guinea pigs at SynAudCon. And yes, everyone has a unique signature. They utilized the ITE - in the ear - microphone technique that drops a transducer into the pressure zone of the ear drum. In doing so the recording is complete with all of the phase information in the exact form in which it reaches the ear. To make a long story short, the recordings using such techniques are completely 3-Dimensional. They require no special encoding/decoding and you can with simple front and rear 2-channel equipment (a stereo pair in front, and a stereo pair in back, adjusted fro gain so that the rear pair are 'barely' perceptible - in other works you increase the gain until you can just barely tell they are there and then you back it off slightly). Suffice it to say that I have listened to both recordings made from a symphony conductor's 'ears', and also from the FOH mix position at a Grateful Dead Show from when they invited Don & Carolyn out for assistance, and the acuity of the total 360 degree (2 pi steradians => .5 sphere) localization was absolutely astounding - up to and including acoustical cues that literally stimulate your physical response to a recorded comment and tap on the shoulder from behind that literally caused whoever hears it to immediately turn around and respond as if they were responding to someone real. Spooky to say the least! Amazingly, the only 'commercial' application interest has been from IMAX. But then few outside SynAudCon have ever been privy to experiencing it. There is also an AES preprint available regarding the technique. http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=5820 But anyway... Here is another article that briefly makes reference to the technique, and I will try to comb through the 20 years of newsletters and correspondence in an attempt to gather more info about the specific measurements and knowledge gained from the research and I will try to post it here as time permits. The research is both unique and extremely enlightening. Even the House Ear Institute folks were amazed at the results. Yes, the human element is a critical part of the response system. But before anyone rushes to judgment and decides that we should be building systems to correlate to the psychoacoustics, there is more to the puzzle! And for the most part, this is not necessary! But this does introduce another can of worms! And this realm is as fundamentally dependent upon the time domain (if not more so!) as all the other areas of acoustics. Thus, there is not getting away from learning the fundamentals of the time domain. I know folks are tired of hearing it, but the advent of the primacy of the time domain in the field of acoustics is the acoustical equivalent of quantum electrodynamics to the discipline of physics. It is both fundamental and pervasive! ITE.pdf Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LarryC Posted September 20, 2005 Share Posted September 20, 2005 Dragon, it looks like a fascinating article and I'd like to print it out. Unfortunately, it greatly minaturizes the image and prints all 4 pages in a single strip on a single 8.5 X 11 sheet. How can I get it to print out each page in full size? Thanks -- Larry Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dragonfyr Posted September 20, 2005 Author Share Posted September 20, 2005 Try this... I have replaced the original post with this version too, so it should be in two places... I hope this works better. It seems to depend on what version of Adobe or other pdf tool you use to open the file regarding how it displays. I hope this is more universal... The alternative will be to simply post 4 separate pages. Please let me know if you still have problems! NotExactlyOmni_HearingDirectivity.4pg.pdf Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cwop Posted September 20, 2005 Share Posted September 20, 2005 This is very closely related to the topic at hand here....and might be handy for some home recordists........ http://www.sonicstudios.com/dsm.htm Very fascinating subject overall.... RJP Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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