The human auditory system and audio

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In this paper, a meta-analysis of the important biological factors that might impact how we approach the design and how we experience audio might help to shed light on many of the controversies in the audio field.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4437822

The Human Auditory System and Audio​

32 Pages Posted: 4 May 2023 Last revised: 1 Aug 2023

Milind N. Kunchur​

University of South Carolina
Date Written: April 28, 2023

Abstract​

This work reviews the human auditory system, elucidating some of the specialized mechanisms and non-linear pathways along the chain of events between physical sound and its perception. Customary relationships between frequency, time, and phase—such as the uncertainty principle—that hold for linear systems, do not apply straightforwardly to the hearing process. Auditory temporal resolution for certain processes can be a hundredth of the period of the signal, and can extend down to the microseconds time scale. The astonishingly large number of variations that correspond to the neural excitation pattern of 30000 auditory nerve fibers, originating from 3500 inner hair cells, explicates the vast capacity of the auditory system for the resolution of sonic detail. And the ear is sensitive enough to detect a basilar-membrane amplitude at the level of a picometer, or about a hundred times smaller than an atom. This article surveys and provides new insights into some of the impressive capabilities of the human auditory system and explores their relationship to fidelity in reproduced sound.

Keywords: hearing, ear, time domain, temporal, resolution, non-linear

It is a dense work and will probably have to be studied in depth but the summary can be seen as a cheat sheet to get to the bottom of the research referred to in the study. Enjoy the read.

 

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