How do you hear tones?
Reply #14 – 2006-01-19 16:44:08
They claim humanity is made up of two types of listeners: the fundamental tone hearer and the overtone hearer . They go on and say that the former is prevalently hearing with the left side of his brain and usually prefers melodic music and higher instruments (piano, violin, flute), while the latter is hearing with his ride side and favours instruments with rich timbre (voice, bassoon, cello). As a matter of fact, the boundaries between the two extreme types of listeners are reported as being gliding. Additionally, fundamental tone hearers are believed to be more sensible towards proper signal phase, impulse precision (transients) and "time-right" playback with low runtime differences. Overtone heares, on the other hand, are believed to be more sensible towards tonality and more 'forgiving' towards runtime differences (e.g. between woofers and tweeters of loudspeakers) that fundamental tone hearers are particularly critical towards. I find these results highly interesting because it involves some serious research among a group of purposedly mixed listeners like pro musicians, hobby music enthusiasts and everyday people. Measurements include EEG analysis to assess how e.g. intensely the listening cortex of each participant is working during the listening experience. At this time, it is nothing more than enhanced basic research ... but research is pointing in the right direction IMO.