Re: Gaussian vs uniform noise audibility (Julius Smith )

Subject: Re: Gaussian vs uniform noise audibility
From:    Julius Smith  <jos(at)CCRMA.STANFORD.EDU>
Date:    Fri, 23 Jan 2004 12:06:01 -0800

At 11:16 AM 1/23/2004, Eckard Blumschein wrote:
>First of all, forget the wrong idea that the cochlea performs a complex
>Fourier transform.

This implies phase is discarded.  However, phase information does exist as
the phase of the basilar membrane vibration, which becomes the phase of the
firing-rate modulation.  Since basilar membrane filtering is generally
modeled as linear, any corresponding short-time-Fourier-transform would
have to be complex to model basilar membrane filtering.  Subsequent
half-wave rectification does not eliminate all phase information, although
it would if subsequent smoothing were sufficient to eliminate all
perceivable "ripple" in the time-domain envelope.

-- Julius