Klarinet Archive - Posting 000326.txt from 1996/11

From: Jonathan Cohler <cohler@-----.NET>
Subj: Re: Rough, smooth, dark, bright
Date: Fri, 15 Nov 1996 13:59:32 -0500

At 10:19 AM 11/15/96, Douglas Sears wrote:
>On Fri, 15 Nov 1996, Jim Harper wrote:
>
>> So may we extrapolate that as we age and lose high frequency hearing
>> all horns will sound "darker" to us?
>
>I don't think so. Clarinet cutoff frequencies are rather low, around
>1500-1800 Hz, and your hearing would be very poor if you couldn't hear
>those frequencies. Besides, some degree of adaptation would occur,
>because all other sounds would be equally "dark" to you. With very poor
>high-frequency hearing, I think you would lose the ability to discriminate
>between "dark" and "bright".
>
> --Doug
>
>--------------------------
>Doug Sears dsears@-----.org/~dsears

I agree and disagree.

The "darkness" of the sound is a function of the amount of high frequency
content. The cutoff frequency largely determines how much high frequency
energy will be radiated from a clarinet.

As you hear less and less of the high frequencies due to hearing loss, the
sound you hear will indeed be darker and darker. The question of whether
one remembers what it used to sound like before the hearing loss is a
psychoacoustic question. Whether one would rate it as darker on his or her
own internal "darkness" scale is also a psychoacoustic question.

Certainly, if person A has good high frequency hearing and person B does
not, Person B may not be able to tell the difference in "darkness" between
two instruments that person A can easily recognize. Person B may rate them
the same in darkness.

Therefore, he is perceiving the brighter instrument as darker than it
actually is (when heard by listeners with good hearing).

So I guess it depends whether one is talking about psychoacoustics or
actual phsyical reality.

----------------------
Jonathan Cohler
cohler@-----.net

   
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