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From: sasaki@endor.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.audio
Subject: Re: Absolute phase
Message-ID: <511@husc6.HARVARD.EDU>
Date: Wed, 22-Oct-86 23:27:46 EDT
Article-I.D.: husc6.511
Posted: Wed Oct 22 23:27:46 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 24-Oct-86 04:27:13 EDT
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Reply-To: sasaki@endor.UUCP (Marty Sasaki)
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A friend of mine did some psycho-acoustic tests and it was easy to
tell the difference with hand claps and human voice, and almost
impossible with musical instruments that included strings, reeds, and
horns.

The tests weren't exactly double blind, my friend made a tape where
pairs of test sounds were recorded with about 5 seconds of silence
between. The order of the sounds was determined by a dice throw and my
friend tried hard to make everything else equal. Everyone listened to
the same tape, alone in the testing room. We were told to mark on a
sheet of paper whether the sounds were the same or were different.
I'm sure that there were some biases introduced, but the test was
pretty good.

As for whether the results of the experiment have any bearing on music
heard on audio system, I can't say, and don't want to get flamed for
an opinion either way. I just present this information as an
indication that you can tell the difference in absolute phase under
(highly artificial) test conditions.


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  Marty Sasaki				uucp:   harvard!sasaki
  Strategic Information			arpa:	sasaki@harvard.harvard.edu
  80 Blanchard Road			bitnet: sasaki@harvunxh
  Burlington, MA 01803			phone:	617-273-5500