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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!floyd!vax135!houxz!houxm!houem!dvorak
From: dvorak@houem.UUCP ( Chuck Dvorak )
Newsgroups: net.audio
Subject: Auditory discrimination
Message-ID: <264@houem.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 20-Jun-84 17:09:02 EDT
Article-I.D.: houem.264
Posted: Wed Jun 20 17:09:02 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 21-Jun-84 07:53:24 EDT
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Holmdel NJ
Lines: 22

I fail to see how a human, whose sensitivity to 60 kHz is zero,
can discriminate between 20kHz sine- and square-waves, a task
that necessitates sensitivity at 60kHz...

UNLESS

1. nonlinear distortion is occuring in the audio equipment
			or
2. nonlinear distortion is occuring in the ear.

Of course, both of these occur, but if either of these
effects cause the appropriate "adequate stimulus," then
the real discrimination being performed is NOT between
the waveforms whose fundamental is 20kHz.

BTW, at 18 kHz, humans require a sound pressure level that
is a million times greater than that required at 1khz
(in order to hear anything at all).

--Chuck (...houem!dvorak)  AT&T Bell Labs