Interesting Papers re temporal resolution Options

[ncdrawl]

http://www.physics.sc.edu/kunchur/Acoustics-papers.htm

http://www.physics.sc.edu/kunchur/papers/FAQs.pdf

[John_Siau]

From the summary paragraph in "Audibility of temporal smearing and time misalignment of acoustic signals" by Dr. Kunchur

These qualitative and anecdotal observations point to the possibility that human hearing may be sensitive to temporal errors, τ , that are shorter than the reciprocal of the limiting angular frequency [2πfmax]^−1 ≈ 9 μs, thus necessitating bandwidths in audio equipment that are much higher than fmax in order to preserve fidelity.

Again, the same glaring error:

The Nyquist frequency does NOT determine the temporal resolution of a PCM system. The entire premise of the paper is fundamentally flawed. The experiment proves the need for moderately controlled jitter but does not establish the need for higher sample rates.

[Axon]

From the summary paragraph in "Audibility of temporal smearing and time misalignment of acoustic signals" by Dr. Kunchur

These qualitative and anecdotal observations point to the possibility that human hearing may be sensitive to temporal errors, τ , that are shorter than the reciprocal of the limiting angular frequency [2πfmax]^−1 ≈ 9 μs, thus necessitating bandwidths in audio equipment that are much higher than fmax in order to preserve fidelity.

Again, the same glaring error:

The Nyquist frequency does NOT determine the temporal resolution of a PCM system. The entire premise of the paper is fundamentally flawed. The experiment proves the need for moderately controlled jitter but does not establish the need for higher sample rates.

That seems too harsh to me - I agree that Dr. Kunchur is making huge conceptual mistakes with his treatment of digital audio, and in a lot of other things for that matter, but the experiment itself can't be dismissed so easily. Despite all the issues I have with the paper that I mentioned earlier, isn't it at least plausible on some sort of a priori level that, if one can guarantee a distortion of fairly reasonable consistency (internal to the ear), that testing of ultrasonics on that basis may be reasonable?

[WernerO]

Dr. Kunchur is... and in a lot of other things for that matter, but the experiment itself can't be dismissed so easily. ... isn't it at least plausible on some sort of a priori level that, if one can guarantee a distortion of fairly reasonable consistency (internal to the ear), that testing of ultrasonics on that basis may be reasonable?

I agree totally. The jumping to conclusions re digital audio is flawed, but that does not invalidate
both experiments, and there might be something interesting lurking there.


By the way:

[*]When these issues are corrected, the values of ΔLp(2) for the RC-filter experiment fall from 1.4db down to the 0.2-0.3db range, and do not materially differ between the 3.9us and 4.7us cases. It therefore becomes extremely difficult to justify the results of the RC filter test due to nonlinear mixing.

Isn't that already in the RC paper, implicitly? One of the test subjects was tested to have hearing capability
to only less than 10kHz, while he faultlessly detected RCs down to 5.6us, and scored 8/10 on 4us (or whatever the figures were).