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Re: Which is more sensitive? - spectrogram software or human hearing

Subject: Re: Which is more sensitive? - spectrogram software or human hearing
From: "chrishails50" chrishails50
Date: Sun Aug 15, 2010 3:58 am ((PDT))
Like others have said - it depends. I am not a trained sound
professional and I find trained listeners, like some on this group, can
get things out of sounds that I can't without a visual aid. Also my ears
have had 60 years wear and tear and consequently I can see things on a
spectrogram at frequencies I can no longer hear. But I can also hear
certain qualities in sounds that I cannot get from a spectrogram.

I listen to birds a lot, and I believe that they can make sounds and
make changes to those sounds at speeds the human nervous system is just
not geared to cope with. Thus we need to manipulate the sound by slowing
it down to understand what is going on - I find the visual help of a
spectrogram immensely helpful in understanding this which is why I use
them a lot on my site. For a couple of examples of what I mean try this:

http://tiny.cc/h5dat    or this:      http://tiny.cc/ppncg

Especially in the Savi's Warbler the spectrogram is picking out a level
of detail not discernible, certainly at least not by my ears, and by
stretching it out we can understand what might be going on. I suspect in
this respect it makes the sonogram more "sensitive" than my ears. But as
I say there are other qualitative aspects it cannot tell me.

Chris
www.wildechoes.org <http://www.wildechoes.org>

--- In  Thomas Ashcraft <>
wrote:
>
>
>
> Just curious:  Can a human hear and distinguish more acutely than a
> computer spectrogram can display or visualize?
>
> Thomas
> :
>
> .
> Thomas Ashcraft
> New Mexico
>










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