Talk:Loudness/Archive 1

Scavenged from deletions

Could be incorporated somehow!

Auditory Physiology

Louder sounds have less spatial selectivity on the basilar membrane (chochlea in the inner ear), weaker sounds are more restricted localized. Loudness is heard at the shallow end of the envelope triangle of a traveling wave (sound). Frequency discrimination is performed at the end. The number of activated nerve fibers used per inner hair cell increases with the stimulus intensity. Auditory fibers with identical best frequencies have different response thresholds.

--Light current 21:54, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Loudness and speed of sound

Does the loudness of a wave affect the speed of a wave? What factors affect the speed of sound? freestylefrappe 01:54, August 7, 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand your question correctly but in your average airspace sound always travels at the same speed. The Speed of sound is defined by the medium it travels through (air, water etc.) and is slightly modified by temperature.

On the other hand if you're talking about speed as the rate of a wave signal then you should see frequency for more details. The frequency of a sound defines it's pitch. Frequency is not modifed by loudness and neither is the speed of a sound. Loudness modifes velocity of a sound. --Mattimatti 06:21, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Loudness is primarily a correlate to the amplitude of a sound. The speed of a sound is defined only by the properties of the medium it travels within and not the amplitude nor frequency. The Sleepwalker 22:02, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Is Sound Energy/Power a function of Sound Frequency ? Why ?

When you look at the frequency spectrum of a song, with a linear frequency axis scale, the low frequencies appear much stronger (even in dB) than the high frequencies. Why is that? Is it inherent to the properties of sound itself, or does it reflect our ears' relative sensitivity to high frequency sound and the sound engineers therefore adjusted the spectrum so we may hear low frequencies as loud as high frequencies (i.e. they intentionally made low frequencies louder because our ears are relatively insensitive to them)? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.227.97.30 (talk) 07:26, 7 January 2007 (UTC).

Hearing actually quite clearly functions on a logarithmic frequency scale (see the tonotopic nature and arrangement of the basilar membrane and auditory nerve). If you look at distribution of energy on a log scale, it tends to be relatively flat. Flat energy on a logarithmic scale equals an even distribution across the auditory system. The Sleepwalker 21:59, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

The mentioned lower power spectral density at higher frequencies is also a natural result of harmonic frequencies as seen by sinusoidal decomposition of musical notes (Fourier series). The fundamental tone is the lowest frequency and defines the "note" being played. The Timbre is given by the relative intensities of all the harmonics present (fundamental and overtones). There are rare examples of missing fundamentals (e.g. bassoon, I believe), but by far the most common type of spectrum is of decreasing amplitude for higher overtones. Usually, any resonant structure (stretched string, resonant air-cavity or vibrating bar, typically) will respond most at its fundamental frequency, and have smaller resonant peaks at all integer multiples of it. On a logarithmic frequency scale (closer to human perception), the reduced amplitude higher harmonics bunch up, so, as The Sleepwalker says, the distribution is much flatter for most music when represented this way. White noise and transient impulses (especially as they get very short, approaching the Dirac delta function) have a flat spectrum on the linear frequency scale, however, so identifying percussive impacts is often easiest on a linear-frequency spectrogram, where they are represented by a bright vertical line of a single colour (=intensity) when shown in the most common spectral display format used in audio software. Constant background hiss (white noise), is typically a single colour representing low intensity. --Dynamicimanyd 09:03, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Loudness control

I added the following paragraph, which was removed:

"Although many implementations of the "loudness" control do attenuate the middle frequencies more rapidly than the low and high frequencies, this is based on a mistaken interpretation of the constant-loudness curves. Since only the low-frequency ends of the curves bunch together, while the high frequency ends maintain the same separation as the middles, the high frequencies should be attenuated at the same rate as the middle frequencies."

This was characterized as an "instructional paragraph aimed at electronics designers". I did not intend it as that, but rather as a correction to or fuller explanation of the statement in the previous paragraph that "The 'loudness' control on a consumer stereo alters the frequency response curve, attenuating midrange frequencies...". The reference to Lenk on this statement does not seem to support it, since Lenk (p 5.13) says "The human ear has difficulty in hearing low-frequency sounds at low levels and responds mainly to the high-frequency components." This is consistent with my position that constant-loudness curves, from Fletcher and Munson through all subsequent investigators, show no significant change (from curve to curve, not from investigator to investigator) in the shape of the curves at the middle and--importantly--the upper frequencies.

It is however true that many loudness controls are designed according to the erroneous belief that both treble and bass should be boosted at low volume levels. But many are not designed that way, which was the point of my correction. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.86.92.198 (talk) 13:50, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

I removed that entry. My problem with it was that it said "based on a mistaken interpretation" and "should be". How can we possibly know what each and every loudness circuit designer had in mind? We are not able to say with any certainty what they were trying to interpret. The phrase "should be" does not often fit well into an encyclopedic article.

I move that we simply observe and acknowledge what's out there, noting that some designs match the ISO loudness curves more closely. As far as which designs are which, I don't have any references that talk about quantity or quality of loudness button circuitry, and I haven't seen charts that compare various designs... That's where I come up short on this topic. Binksternet (talk) 16:08, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

How about this: I propose to remove the clause about attenuating midrange frequencies from the existing paragraph, since it is contradicted by the Lenk reference, then move that reference to the end of the sentence, since it more directly applies to the physiology than to the implementation. I will make the change, which you can of course reverse. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.86.92.198 (talk) 19:56, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Boolean property

The first paragraph of this article currently ends: It is also an known fact that loudness is actually a boolean attribute, therefore can not be adjusted by an analog control.

The only boolean property I can think of is the switch on some consumer electronics, which is mentioned in the "other uses" section. So I propose that this sentence is removed. --Rkaj (talk) 13:38, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

---

Agreed and done. I have worked in audio processing and perception for more than 30 years and have never heard of this "property." The poor grammar additionally makes the statement suspect. --71.48.188.4 (talk) 19:20, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Plangency

Because of the redirect from [plangency] (whence I came) and the dead end that results, i.e., [plangency] is not in this page or the [Loudness] page itself, so users fail. Perhaps you might consider an entry fairly early on (end of the first paragraph??) that simply says the word [plangency] is not exactly a synonym for [Loudness]. It can add notions of deepness or resonance, and sometimes even mournfulness (... or somesuch). Or else, should/could the redirect be eliminated/changed? [Plangent] and [Plangency] tend to be literary, do they not? Thus a redirect to wiktionary? (I'm ignorant if redirects can be done to wiktionary.) KenH (talk) 08:29, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't think plangency has much to do with this article. Soft redirects to Wiktionary are possible with the templates {{Soft redirect}} or {{Wi}}. SpinningSpark 18:07, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Loudness is not the same as plangent, which came from "plaint" or "lament", and means "having a loud reverberating sound" or "having an expressive and especially plaintive quality". Plangency is more akin to "depth of expression" or "sadness" than anything related to sound. I do not think this article should attempt to explain plangent or plangency. I have retargeted the redirect which brought you here, to take the reader to Sadness.

Tangentially, Ernesto Nazareth's Plangente is one of the best, saddest, Brazilian tangos, in my opinion. Binksternet (talk) 15:16, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Entomology of Volume

I went to Volume (sound) to learn about the entomology of the word "volume" in regards to its acoustics-related definition. It redirected me to Loudness. Could someone answer my query? (Since this answer most likely belongs more at wiktionary than at wikipedia, I have also asked it at http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Information_desk. Humanist Geek (talk) 05:34, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

You should ask questions like this at the Reference desk. SpinningSpark 06:25, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Ear-balance comparison signal

I received the following objection from Altaphon via email to this revert.

Re your reverting my edit on ear-balance loudness measurement, are you sure that the comparison signal was a sine wave? The references I saw to the original audiometer showed a sort of broadband signal like a sawtooth; sine wave audio oscillators were not easy in 1929. This is important as we start to measure loudness a little more critically. Please let me know if you have a reference to the sine wave condition. Thanks

Makes sense. Is anyone able to corroborate this one way or another (with sources)? ~Kvng (talk) 19:09, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

I'm working on it. Altaphon (talk) 03:16, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

Disambiguation within this entry

There are at least three senses of "loudness" and it's easy for nonspecialists to become confused. One is auditory loudness, that is the subjective amplitude of sounds we hear, expressed in sone or phon. Another is program loudness, that is the relative amplitude of program material carried in an electronic medium, expressed in LU or related units. Another is the frequency response alteration of electronic equipment intended to compensate for reduced hearing sensitivity to low frequencies at low levels. How to sort this in the article?Altaphon (talk) 03:16, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

The first two attempt to be the same (of course they aren't in practice because nothing's perfect) but I don't see a problem covering both here in the same article. For the third, there is Loudness compensation which is discussed and linked to from here. ~Kvng (talk) 14:00, 30 April 2019 (UTC)