Mel scale, in general

[Pierre Divenyi <pdivenyi@xxxxxxxxx>]

For the musician-me, the Mel scale is an oxymoron -- I know quite well what
the half or the double of an interval is, regardless of its chroma and
regardless of whether the interval is sanctioned by the Western system.

For the psychoacoustician-me, the concept of the Mel scale is invalid. When
experience (i.e., musicianship) is detrimental to determining a scale, any
scientifically thinking individual should just scratch his/her head and
close the book on the topic.

Because of this negative conclusion, I have been wondering for a long time
why the speech science and technology community insists on basing their work
on MFCC, a measure derived from an at best dubious and at worst invalid
frequency scale.

-Pierre Divenyi