Hi Stefan, Thanks for your kind note. I like to read/hear all viewpoints because I then have to think harder (difficult for my tiny, bifurcated ganglion of a brain). One *problem* I have with using perceptual judgments of accuracy is that it requires a priori knowledge of a population's perception. In fact, this goes back to my earliest Sursound posts. Briefly, my concern was using psychoacoustically tainted stimuli to perform psychoacoustic tests. Because the population to be studied does not consist of normal-hearing listeners, I shouldn't assume they will hear or react to sounds coming from a multitude of directions in the same manner normal-hearing listeners do. Add to this a hearing aid or implant microphone that is proximal to the pinnae, but not in a position to create a *usual* HRTF or pinna transfer function, and I'm increasingly convinced that a physically accurate stimulus would be worthwhile. But in three dimensional space, how do I assess accuracy? Normal acoustical measurements provide meaningful information, but does not guarantee wave field recreation at the listening position. FOA wouldn't work without some understanding of psychoacoustics--that's the problem. HOA may be more suitable when it comes to creating a physical reality, but I don't know this. It would be tedious to make point-to-pint measurements of a recorded stimuli with a sound intensity probe and compare this to the initial event (which changes by the time we repositioned the probe!). If a TetraMic can make recordings (for post processing) of the real-world event that can be compared to the reproduction in a lab space, this could be useful. I've learned a lot through reading and posting comments (to include naive questions and ideas) on this site.
Stevens', Weber, and others used physical stimuli (weights, light intensity, etc.) to generate psychophysical *laws* (e.g. Weber-Fechner law). Of course, we have scales based on hearing perception (sons, mels) but these are *one dimensional* and actually vary quite a bit from person-to-person). In the presence of physical acoustic accuracy, I can observe or measure behaviors of people donning hearing protectors, hearing aids, and other hearing devices. In some instances, direct physiological response to stimuli provides great insight. Example related to my work: Although cochlear implant recipients may not perform differently to word tests whether they're fitted with one or two (bilateral) implants, a bilateral recipient's blood pressure may be lower in noisy, real-world settings because he/she has a better *sense* of the world, thus making him/her feel safer. But for now, most of what we measure is speech comprehension in pink noise. How listeners react to planes flying overhead while crossing a busy street can't be assessed if I were to present these sounds through two loudspeakers in a 1.5 x 1.5 x 2 meter sound booth. Actually, I could make repeatable measures of CI users reactions to such stimuli. Each listener will have a different *reaction* (or perception), but choosing the best number of subjects (statistical power) and performing the appropriate analysis might give insight that two implants show significantly reduces heart rates when exposed to noise than for single implant users. But this came from stimuli presented through two speakers, and the physical reality of the outside event is just plain (plane?) wrong. In the end, I am observing responses and perceptions to physical (acoustical) stimuli, but I am doing this for a population whose perception isn't like ours. I guess I've said this enough times. Again, thanks for your insights and taking time to read my posts. Best regards, Eric C. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20130709/f5d5f2d9/attachment.html> _______________________________________________ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
