Subject: Re: Mel scale, in general From: "Richard F. Lyon" <DickLyon@xxxxxxxx> Date: Thu, 30 Jul 2009 08:36:12 -0700 List-Archive:<http://lists.mcgill.ca/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=AUDITORY>Pierre, I think the resolution is in what Leon said, that the mel scale is really more about "tone height" or "frequency" than about pitch or melody. So it's mis-named, at the least. It's also not accurate, as Don points out, and maybe a cochlear map is really the better concept. But as you also know, it's used in speech primarily because it seems to work well (at least a local optimum), which is mostly about not resolving pitch harmonics but adequately resolving formants. I think you also agree with me in the feeling that it works well largely because speech systems don't usually have a good model for what to do with pitch information, so they're better off not resolving it; and that this is a problem and an opportunity to find a better way... Dick At 11:34 AM +0200 7/30/09, Pierre Divenyi wrote: >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