Re: Gaussian vs uniform noise audibility (beauchamp james w )

Subject: Re: Gaussian vs uniform noise audibility
From:    beauchamp james w  <jwbeauch(at)UX1.CSO.UIUC.EDU>
Date:    Fri, 23 Jan 2004 10:11:41 -0600

Eckard Blumschein writes:
>Of course, complex representartion of a signal requires magnitude as well
>as phase. (Magnitude is always positive while there are positive and
>negative amplitudes.) This should once again persuade anybody that the
>inner ear does not perform a complex Fourier transform. What about "any
>operation" I agree on condition of just a single snapshot.
>Hearing is, however, a continuous process where the complex Fourier
>transform is doomed to hop from window to window in a clumsy manner.

This is an artifact of using discrete computation. In a continuous (or
"analog") formulation, the short-time transform can be absolutely
continuous in time. And this can be approximated as closely as one wishes
on a computer. However, it is easy to show that only a few samples per
window are required due to the band-limited nature of the window
function.

Jim Beauchamp
Univ. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign