Transfer function of middle ear

[Jont Allen <jba@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Vivek,
The middle ear acts as a high pass filter, with a cutoff about 800 Hz.
It is almost
flat from 800 to 20 kHz or so, depending on the size of the middle ear
(i.e.,
the head). There is a very large literature, much of it in the Jol. of
the Acoustical
Soc. of America. Look at the following papers, for example:

@article{Guinan67,
author={Guinan, J. J. and Peake, W. T.},
year={1967},
title={Middle-ear characteristics of anethetized cats},
journal=JASA,
volume= {41},
pages={1237-1261}
       }

@inproceedings{Shaw78,
author={Shaw, Edgar A. G.},
year={1978},
booktitle={Acoustical Factors Affecting Hearing Aid Performance},
title={The acoustics of the external ear},
editor={Studebaker, G. A. and Hochberg, I.},
publisher={University Park Press},
address={Baltimore, MD},
pages={109--125}
       }

@article{Stinson82,
author={Stinson, M., Shaw, E.A.G. and Lawton, B.W.},
year={1982},
title={Estimation of acoustical energy reflectance at the eardrkum from meas
urements of pressure distribution in the human ear canal},
journal=JASA,
volume={72},
pages={ 766-773}
       }

@article{Puria91b,
author={Puria, Sunil and Allen, Jont B.},
year={1991},
title={A parametric study of cochlear input impedance},
journal=JASA,
volume={89},
number={1},
month=jan,
pages={287-309}
       }


--
Jont B. Allen,     jba@auditorymodels.org;   908/654-1274voice; 908/789-9575 fax
382 Forest Hill Way
Mountainside NJ 07092
http://auditorymodels.org/jba


``It is hard to abandon the feeling that the unfamiliar is absurd and illogical.''
       --G.A. Miller, p. 5 of his book `Language and communication'