Re: Gaussian vs uniform noise audibility

[John Hershey <jhershey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Are you really sure that hearing can always be completely understood by
> means of linear treatment of an arbitrarily chosen section of time? Do you

I was just trying to clarify what assumptions lead to the statements being
made.  However I think this statistical analysis is probably misleading, as
is the interpretation in terms of the Fourier transform.  It's not as if the
auditory system would have to measure higher-order statistics of the signal
as such over time-- one signal would  just sound different from another
because it would have a different spectrum at any given time, even if the
means, or some other statistics of the spectrum, are the same for both
signals. Likewise with respect to the
Fourier transform -- one has to specify at least a window size to get
meaningful hints about hearing.

On the other hand, thinking about it statistically is useful for forming
intuitions about signals.  I otherwise wouldn't have thought about the fact
that non-Gaussian i.i.d. noise can introduce higher-order statistical
dependencies in the Fourier transform, even though the spectrum is the same.