• TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
    Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
    Join free Log in
    Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.

The Church of Dan Atkinson / The Wood Doesn't Matter Club

Status
Not open for further replies.
#922
mongo2 said:
OK, since not everyone perceives the same tone it's apparent that the effects of psychoacoustic masking can vary from person to person.
Click to expand...

No, there's not enough certainty to draw a straight line from one to another. The effects may vary, but the fact that people have different tastes, sensitivities in tone alone doesn't get us there. There's also hearing sensitivity, which is a different ballgame, etc.

Psychoacoustic masking is extremely consistent and predictable. It's why there aren't many people who pick up a cell phone and can't hear what the other party is saying for want of discarded data in the audible range.

Remember that psychoacoustic masking is a strength, not a weakness. People whose brains didn't do it would probably have a very hard time making use of the world around them. You couldn't very easily carry a conversation outdoors without it.

I raised it to illustrate the fact that observed information in the audible band of a waveform wouldn't necessarily be audible itself. It isn't the key to super-tone-hearing.
 
#924
mongo2 said:
OK, since not everyone perceives the same tone it's apparent that the effects of psychoacoustic masking can vary from person to person.
Click to expand...

That's possible and even likely (although at what magnitude is uncertain) but it's probably like a bell curve over a very large sample size... the vast majority will fall within a certain set of parameters. Further, psychoaudiologic studies control for this with a decent sample size (starting at dozens, going up to hundreds). Three or four guys probably won't cut it if you want to have any sort of statistical power.

Psychoacoustic masking and the ability to hear certain frequencies probably doesn't vary nearly as much as many of our outward traits. It is an "invisible" trait and assuming that in an individual it is functioning at the modal value (the value or set of values most commonly exhibited in the population), small changes in the masking or unmasking of certain frequencies will not have a big impact on that individual's ability to spread the genes that led to this specific filtered hearing of sound (if I hear 1800 Hz a little better than you it's not likely to improve my genetic fitness and spread the gene that led to the enhanced perception any faster than your gene will get spread). However a dramatic loss in function that was gene-mediated would cause a big drop in fitness because hearing is part of how we communicate with one another and communication definitely facilitates reproduction. This is different from other traits that can change fairly dramatically without big changes in fitness and so we do see very wide variations, traits like height and hair color. So I suspect the psychoacoustics of hearing in the human population are highly conserved, although I do begin to wonder whether that's not true in the 10-20 kHz range; but mids and lows are so important in communication and survival I really doubt nature lets our genes play with how we perceive them for long.

(For more stuff like this written by an actual evolutionary biologist check out The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins.)
 
#927
thiocyclist said:
Psychoacoustic masking and the ability to hear certain frequencies probably doesn't vary nearly as much as many of our outward traits. It is an "invisible" trait and assuming that in an individual it is functioning at the modal value (the value or set of values most commonly exhibited in the population), small changes in the masking or unmasking of certain frequencies will not have a big impact on that individual's ability to spread the genes that led to this specific filtered hearing of sound (if I hear 1800 Hz a little better than you it's not likely to improve my genetic fitness and spread the gene that led to the enhanced perception any faster than your gene will get spread). However a dramatic loss in function that was gene-mediated would cause a big drop in fitness because hearing is part of how we communicate with one another and communication definitely facilitates reproduction. This is different from other traits that can change fairly dramatically without big changes in fitness and so we do see very wide variations, traits like height and hair color. So I suspect the psychoacoustics of hearing in the human population are highly conserved, although I do begin to wonder whether that's not true in the 10-20 kHz range; but mids and lows are so important in communication and survival I really doubt nature lets our genes play with how we perceive them for long.
Click to expand...


Actually the more I think about it I begin to realize there is definitely the possibility for very minute changes in how frequencies are masked in the upper register, probably above 2000 Hz. Everything below that has been so crucial for our survival and later our evolution into animals with language I would think it would be fairly conserved.

Let's say it's true and there are meaningful variations in musical hearing in people. This is why you need a double-blind study with a reasonable sample. Think about clinical trials for drugs: CYP450s vary a LOT from person to person, especially based on your race, and so to prove safety and efficacy drug companies need quite a few people to make sure if a certain sub-population will have complications, they catch it.
 
#938
mongo2 said:
What would those limits be?
Click to expand...

Oy... but that is a huge, huge, huge list...

Things like - normal human hearing lowend is ~20Hz, but tests have occasionally found folks who can hear down to around 12Hz.

...but no tests, over about 80 years of psychoacoustics, has really found anyone capable of hearing below 10Hz.

Feel it? Yes. Hear it? No.

No humans can hear 100KHz.

Masking effects everyone to some extent.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Latest posts

Top Bottom
Back