General Question about the Perception of Transients

[Chris Share <cshare01@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

I recently attended a course on the mathematics of the FFT. In the 
course I was told that one of the reasons why the FFT is so useful as an 
audio analysis tool is because it is similar to how the human hearing 
mechanism works (i.e. that the human hearing mechanism acts, to a 
certain degree, like a frequency analyser).

I'm interested in the perception of transients, as they play such an 
important role in the perception of music and in hearing generally. I 
was wondering if there are any mathematical models of transient 
perception analogous to the FFT/hearing idea. I've come across research 
into transient analysis, however most of this seems to be from a 
strictly DSP perspective, and does not incorporate perceptual factors 
(or any perceptual model).

I guess what I'm really asking is, are there any DSP approaches to 
transient analysis that are analogs of the hearing mechanism?

Any help or thoughts on this question would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

Chris