The fine art of reading - was [Re: Human hearing instataneous dynamic rage?]

caveat lector
lingua in letifico ;)

Engineers read? I doubt.
Let's see if they can be lead on a parsing trail, even if English ~BNF.

Lets parse the original subject line, "Human hearing instataneous dynamic rage?"

The first word is "human". That can be used as a noun or an adjective.
The second is "hearing". That can be used as a noun or an adjective.
The third is "instataneous". Missing from dictionary but resembles
"instantaneous", an adjective.
The fourth is "dynamic". That is an adjective.
The last is "rage". That's a noun but why use "rage" in an on-topic DSP
post. Body of post refers to "range". Another typo.


Parse on.
In English, four adjectives modifying one noun - unlikely.
Noun Noun would be strange/awkward.
Adjective Noun Adjective Adjective Noun seems a likely construct.

As this is comp.dsp, with with many audio types lurking, it's unlikely that "hearing" is a law reference. The primary topic evidently concerns how humans hear.

Now to the second phrase. "Dynamic range" is a common term and meaning seems clear. But it is modified by "instantaneous". "Instantaneous" and "dynamic" just aren't commonly used together. Red flag raised.

The point is explicitly clarified in the first sentence of the second paragraph by contrasting
"I'm more interested in comparing a loud and soft sound being
distinguished at the same time."
to "dynamic range of human ear" being comparison of "threshold of pain" to "weakest detectable sound".


I was offered key words psychoacoustics, lossy compression methods, and masking. These proved useful for Google and Wikipedia searches. I also was given some historical background on measurement/reception of distortion in audio systems which brought to mind things in my general background. The result is that I now know that what I'm looking for will be under a heading related to "audio masking". I suspect the number I'm looking for will be in vicinity of 20-30 dB.


I was _THEN_ asked the purpose of my question.
It is to devise a scaling procedure for a *3D* representation of intensity vs frequency vs time. I commented, as an aside, that I had found *2D* representations (aka spectrograms ) unsatisfactory.

So I was then hit with methods of possibly improving 2D methods in which I have no reason to be interested. Down hill from there.












Ben Bradley wrote:
[snip OT discussion of displaying in 2D]

You're looking at frequency vs. amplitude vs. time. I suspect one
reason you're not seeing what you want is the length of the FFT. If
it's long then it will smear higher frequency transients. Now that I
think about it, it will smear all transients. The FFT displays things
as if they were steady-state signals present for the whole duration of
the window.

NO

My FFT's (NOTE BENE the plural) cover up to tens of seconds.
Currently I'm using 10 mSec windows.

Why I don't see features is *STRICTLY* _AND_ *EXPLICITLY* a representation issue.

There a large items.
There are small items.
I want to see details of each.

Now a foot high object on a mountain may not be significant.
But a foot deep hole in your front walk may be.
I want to see both in a single display.

The typical approach is a log plot.
Not too bad for large features.
Small features can be seen.
*BUT* irrelevantly small features also become *CLUTTER*

My input data may be 16 bit PCM, but my calculations are done in floating point with at least a 10^16 dynamic range. Obviously I can discard any points that are 2^16 smaller than my largest.

The question then becomes "does the system being investigated raise the smallest significant value more?"



[snip]

Try to work with us, both Jim and I are trying to help you, and
you're being a bit cantankerous.

Over what range of values would you be displaying for amplitude?
20? 500? 50,000?

See above ;)

Signed
The not-so-cantankerous OP
.

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