Hello Everybody,

Basically sound engineer, i've been working hard for 4 years to create this website dedicated to Sound. It consists of relating and defining the whole terms dealing with the sound. A great part of the articles are illustrated with nice graphs and schemes. I would have liked to translate it in both languages but i am not able and i have not enough time

By hoping that you will appreciate all the same, I give you the address:

Le Petit Lexique du Son | Knowledge and Sharing

You will find a useful collection of free audio software (almost all for Windows) like correlation phase meters, oscilloscope, audio format converters, AC3 and AAC converters, spectrum analysers, pure tone generators, tone detector, etc.

Free audio software forum


Online Listening of many different formats (ADPCM, AC3, AAC, MP3, MP3PRO, ATRAC, OGG, VQF, WMA)

Enjoy

BiZanGoiN

edit: Removed huge image.

Huge work but also some mistakes. Musepack is not a lossless codec, it's lossy. It's "WavPack", not "Wavepack". All the lossless items are pretty much pointless: no mention of versions used, of encoding/decoding times etc.

Nice work - but I guess my French is to rusty to read and understand all you´ve written there

Shame on me !!
i am gonna correct it, thank you so much for your help !

Under "signal to noise ratio", you mention the human ear having a 120dB snr @ 1kHz.
This value is the dynamic range value of the human ear, not the snr. (how would you test snr of human ear?)

Dear Gabriel,

It is not wrong to say "Ear signal to noise ratio 120 dB @ 1 000 Hertz" because even human ear is a twin transducer between air flow energy / liquid energy (cochlea) and liquid / electric energy. So, ears feature noise floor (absolute human ear threshold 0dB=2x10-5 Pa) and pain threshold (120 dB à 1 000 Hertz).

Thus, it is true to talk about ear signal to noise ratio. It is also true to talk about "ear dynamic" but the dynamic is a relative difference between loud signals and low signals. Moreover, when you talk about dynamic, you don't take into account frequency. So it is more accurate to say "signal to noise ratio" even if you talk about human ears.

So you are considering the difference between ATH and threshold of pain to be a signal noise ratio? To me this is a dynamic range, not an snr.

I agree that the human auditory system, as a mechanical transducer system, has a snr. However, it is quite hard to measure it, and it is a lot smaller than 120dB.
If you play a 100dB signal, normal human will definitively not be able to hear a 10dB signal. This is because there is masking and middle ear protection. A 120dB snr for a human would be both innapropriate regarding analysis of the content and dangerous considering our inner ear structure.

Masking is another purpose, it's true that you can't listen at 120 dB all the time, it is a question of time exposure. Human ear can hear
120 dB @ 1 kHz for 1 sec without inner disturbances OR
110 dB @ 1 kHz for 10 sec without inner disturbances OR
100 dB @ 1 kHz for 100 sec without inner disturbances OR
etc...

So 120 dB is a theorical value of course measured on a range of people.

But those 120dB are still a dynamic range, not a snr.

if you want