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"perception of tempo change"??


chinglnc

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There is an interesting thesis published on the Uni of Indiana website, called "Perception of time as phase: Towards an adaptive-oscillator model of rhythmic pattern processing" which may be of interest to you. It is a Comp Sci thesis, but there is a fair amount of psych stuff in there, also check out the list of references as some ofthe papers look like they would be of interest to you.

 

Sam

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Hi Sam,

 

I'm inclined to agree with Russ83 on this one.

 

I can understand Simon's point about Interaural Time Difference and Interaural Intensity Difference but I'm not sure that that alone would be the reason for a 'perceived' tempo difference. However I do think that listening environment has a lot to do with the cognitive process of listening to a piece of music. The more complex the listening environment (background noise, early/late reflections, reverb time etc) the more work the brain is having to do to extract the same information. This may have a subliminal effect on your brain's internal clock and its perception of the time it takes to listen to the music and thus the tempo of the music.

 

I would be curious to see if there was any perception difference when you have the same audio set up in different listening environments (say the Atrium compared with a small room). I would also be interested to see whether familiarity of the music has any effect on the perception of tempo. Additionally as this technically an investigation into subjectivity I would be interested to see the results from people in different states on mind, ie, someone very relaxed vs someone very stressed?

 

I'm writing this listening to Pink Floyd's pulse tour live on my headphones and got me thinking. I wonder if listening to a piece of music clean (strait from the studio recording) over headphones compared to listening to the same piece of music played over speakers in a church but still listened to over headphones by the tester would have any perceived tempo change?

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Hi Sam,

 

I'm inclined to agree with Russ83 on this one.

 

I can understand Simon's point about Interaural Time Difference and Interaural Intensity Difference but I'm not sure that that alone would be the reason for a 'perceived' tempo difference. However I do think that listening environment has a lot to do with the cognitive process of listening to a piece of music. The more complex the listening environment (background noise, early/late reflections, reverb time etc) the more work the brain is having to do to extract the same information. This may have a subliminal effect on your brain's internal clock and its perception of the time it takes to listen to the music and thus the tempo of the music.

 

This in part is down to the binaural effects of hearing, of which there is a lot of research into, but none that I am aware of that looks at the perception of tempo. The ability of extract a signal from background noise is often referred to as the cocktail party effect (Cherry, 1953 - JASA vol 25, 975-979), or least were separating competing voices. There is an effect known as the binaural equalisation-cancellation theory (Durlach, 1963 - JASA vol 35 1206 - 1218) where by the signal from one ear is shifted in time and removed subtracted from the other ear, in an effort to remove the masker. The greater the level of reverberation etc the harder this is to do.

 

As far as I am aware nobody has shown this to introduce a time shift though, that's not to say it is not possible as most of the experiments are carried out with noise or voices, not something that has a set tempo.

 

I would be curious to see if there was any perception difference when you have the same audio set up in different listening environments (say the Atrium compared with a small room). I would also be interested to see whether familiarity of the music has any effect on the perception of tempo. Additionally as this technically an investigation into subjectivity I would be interested to see the results from people in different states on mind, ie, someone very relaxed vs someone very stressed?

 

Unfortunately getting any experiment that involves putting participants under stress through the ethics committee is such a PITA it is rarely done, though it would make for some rather interesting research.

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It all sounds like interesting stuff. (no pun intended)

 

As far as I am aware nobody has shown this to introduce a time shift though.

 

How can you test this? surely the time difference would be so small that it could not be measured by a person themselves?

 

Out of curiosity how are you testing the 'perceived' tempo difference? do people listen to the music and then say that sounded a little like 120Bpm? If so what are you using for a control? I remember finding all this sort of stuff really interesting when I was studying it. Apologies if I'm playing devils advocate a little.

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There is an interesting thesis published on the Uni of Indiana website, called "Perception of time as phase: Towards an adaptive-oscillator model of rhythmic pattern processing" which may be of interest to you. It is a Comp Sci thesis, but there is a fair amount of psych stuff in there, also check out the list of references as some ofthe papers look like they would be of interest to you.

 

Sam

 

 

THANKS!!!! ;) :rolleyes: :rolleyes: great resources!!

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You might also find some interesting reading Here in particular his thesis on the localisation in the superimposed soundfield its a bit of heavy reading but the guy is a genius!

 

 

whooaah...IT IS REALLY HEAVY READING ;) !!!

 

thanksssssssss anyway!!!! a great help!! :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

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>SNIP<

This in part is down to the binaural effects of hearing, of which there is a lot of research into, but none that I am aware of that looks at the perception of tempo. The ability of extract a signal from background noise is often referred to as the cocktail party effect (Cherry, 1953 - JASA vol 25, 975-979), or least were separating competing voices. There is an effect known as the binaural equalisation-cancellation theory (Durlach, 1963 - JASA vol 35 1206 - 1218) where by the signal from one ear is shifted in time and removed subtracted from the other ear, in an effort to remove the masker. The greater the level of reverberation etc the harder this is to do.

 

This is how my 'tone deafness' was described to me, which is why I have difficulty in having a conversation in a noisy pub or disco, I can't filter out the background noise and home in on the tone of the other persons voice, I just hear the loudest noise.

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>SNIP<

This in part is down to the binaural effects of hearing, of which there is a lot of research into, but none that I am aware of that looks at the perception of tempo. The ability of extract a signal from background noise is often referred to as the cocktail party effect (Cherry, 1953 - JASA vol 25, 975-979), or least were separating competing voices. There is an effect known as the binaural equalisation-cancellation theory (Durlach, 1963 - JASA vol 35 1206 - 1218) where by the signal from one ear is shifted in time and removed subtracted from the other ear, in an effort to remove the masker. The greater the level of reverberation etc the harder this is to do.

 

This is how my 'tone deafness' was described to me, which is why I have difficulty in having a conversation in a noisy pub or disco, I can't filter out the background noise and home in on the tone of the other persons voice, I just hear the loudest noise.

 

 

 

hi there,

 

I'm quite interested what u said....even when u you tried to concentrate on someone talking, you still couldnt hear it??

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I'm quite interested what u said....even when u you tried to concentrate on someone talking, you still couldnt hear it??

 

I suspect that what Wuddy experienced is a loss of discrimination - the ear/brain mechanism's abilit to reject unwanted noise and concentrate on the wanted signal (usually speech). Those with hearing impairment often have frequency selective deafness and loss of discrimination.

 

Given your interest in this field of psychoacoustics, perhaps this book would be helpful?

 

Simon

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