On Tue, 2010-07-27 at 11:10 -0500, Charles Henry wrote:
Masking theories used by audio codecs to compress audio signals don't
work for people who are trained in listening, e.g. MP3 at any rate is a
PITA. Trained people (here where I do live) do always here a loss in
blind tests.
Even when using dummy heads for recordings, 3D psychoacoustic doesn't
work that good (even if the dummy head isn't that bad ;), e.g. there's
always a dependency for e.g. ahead and above.
So for the 'twice as loud' issue you should ask; "In wich way do we
listen and understand what we do listen too?"
Before the brain does "math", are there any other senses involved to the
interpretation of the input given by the ears? (Btw. I'm sure that math
is just part of nature and can't describe nature, because it's just a
part.)
Regarding to the topic that there are two sound sources and you are
thinking about a relation, try to imagine people who are autistic or who
are 'normal', but having a panic attack, or try to remember a situation,
when you barely were able to escape an accident. The filtering is
completely different. Everybody of us is able to focus allegedly masked
"things".
Perception, the interpretation of the input by all senses will change,
regarding to the context, for audio even regarding to the tilting of
your head to the body.
Recordings and digital audio virtualization always has the lack of the
experienced context. If it should be possible to completely gather
everything of nature by math for specific situations, there still will
be the context, a situation were everybody brains is able to count the
peas that drop to the ground, after the glass of peas fall down to the
ground.
Remember your own experiences when you had or nearly had an accident.
Time seemed to be slower and silent, but important sounds (regarding to
your survival) become loud, while loud, but unimportant sounds become
silent.