The high pitch noise must be secondary effect from electro thermal expansion of gases that the electrical engineers expose themselves at a often frequent basis.
Default tones also just don't work for people that are hard of hearing. My father in law got a new phone - claimed that it was defective because he kept missing calls. Took it back to the store, they said it was fine, etc. Finally, he brought it to me. He is standing across the room, holding the phone, I call his phone, it starts ringing nice and loud, but no reaction at all from him. I take the phone, go in to ring tones and just start making changes while I watch him. After playing a dozen or so with no reaction at all, I play one - he looks up - "You got it to ring?". Set that as his ring tone. Problem solved.
Thanks for this comment. I'm always annoyed when people complain about my ringtone. I can't help having rubbish ears, I was born this way - it's one of the only tones I can hear. Ditto alarm clock tone! People with very impaired hearing actually use vibrating pads under their pillows for their alarms.
@@bordershader Wow, seems like I do the same thing by setting my phone to vibrate for my alarm and putting it under my pillow.. It's to avoid waking up my family
So I was actually wearing headphones and still tilted my head around like the biggest idiot. Turns out that the time delay becomes significantly less noticeable when the source of the sound turns with you...
This is something called internalisation, and the reference you want is Boyd, Akeroyd and Brimijoin (may have got the wrong order there) from about 2011 :)
It is easier to locate high pitched sounds if your ears are further from each other. I once lived a place with a shared space with plants and we got a cicada somehow with some plants. It were driving us nuts with it's chirping, but we couldn't locate it until I held a 25 cm cardboard tube to each ear and walked around. My neighbor were laughing so hard, but still was quite impressed when I found the critter :-)
I was fully ready for a science fact about something I maybe couldn't tell from the video and, y'know what? It was a science fact: Django is a very good boy.
Kinda hijacking this to say... If ya like good boys and love the cute head tilt... Then go check out an old vlogbrothers song by Hank Green, This song is for Willy. It's entirely full of weird and potentially new noises designed for making a cute little puppers tilt their head a bunch to the new sounds. There's also several vids around the same post date that include Willy listening to the song and just Willy being cute.
In music production we usually arrange sounds in the stereo field using the pan control - basically altering the balance of the amplitude between the left and right channels. But, just like this video, you can use what's called a Haas Delay instead, which alters the time relationship between left and right instead. The downside is you might run into phase cancellation issues if your stereo mix is ever collapsed into mono, what we call 'mono compatibility'.
That’s not quite accurate. The left/right shift of the perceived sound source mostly happens with delay times between 1-3ms, Haas‘ research was on larger latencies. He found out that even for latencies as big as 35ms the first wavefront arriving dictates the perceived direction of the sound, even when the succeeding signals are louder. The Haas-effect is mostly used in PA systems at concerts or talks: the sound is delayed in a way that the original sound reaches the audience first so they locate the sound correctly, and then the amplified sound reaches them to ensure everything is heard properly
There's also interaural level difference ILD and it's the second way of our brain telling us the location of a sound usually works better for higher frequencies... the ITD (which is covered in this video) works better for lower frequencies That's why there are the AB and the XY micing technique
This is content. Holy moly. I never knew how badly I wanted to know the things you just told me until you told them to me but I am very glad that you did.
1:00 Steve experiments science on his better half 2:00 How you detect where a sound is coming from 3:30 Why some sounds are difficult to locate 5:50 How to change the find phone tune for Android (easy) 6:00 How to change for iPhone (you can't) 7:00 How birds make use of this 7:50 Why police sirens are difficult to locate and what can be done about it 9:50 Django is a good boy! Amazing video Steve, as always - and thanks! :)
The ambulances I heard in Paris were much easier to locate by sound than any other I've heard. They use the same siren in Morocco as well. It has two pitches that switch sharply between each other. This gives you both direction due to the inter-aural time difference at the alternation. And it gives you a sense of how fast it is coming or going because it is always the same two pitches so you can sense the Doppler effect. Sirens that smoothly rise and fall in pitch make both speed and location hard to hear.
fun-fact. comment on 8:50 - the exact position can also be located thanks to the structure of our ears, which changes the incoming sound in different ways if it's coming from different directions. If the sound is coming from your right hemisphere, then your left ear will not change the shape of the sound wave, however, the right ear will. And once our brain lined up one signal to the other, it will look at how it was distorted to find out not only the horizontal but also the vertical angle of the incoming sound. Moreover, it does so for multiple sounds coming from different directions, which is absolutely amazing. It really blows my mind how complex is the analysis of the incoming sound, that our brain does non-stop 24/7 like nothing. UPD: dog's can't do this ear-shape-distortion-analysis, which is why they tilt their head every time.
For low freqs, phase differences provide good cues, but not for high freqs, as explained. I'm always amazed that the brain can detect lags down to about 10 MICROseconds! However, for high freqs, intensity differences are useful, due to the head shadow effect, whereas for low freqs that doesn't work well because long wavelengths bend around. So these are somewhat complementary cues. And then there are transfer functions due to the intricate shape of the ear that leads to interference patterns, the best cue for elevation and front/back localization that doesn't require head rotation.
The most important is to not be sinusoidal and have sharp attack (sound intensity rising quickly). The precise measurement of timing between both ears, given sound speed of 330 meters per second and normal head size require a mechanism precise to the ~10 microsecond level. The fastest neurons can create burst at 1 khz, so we are 2 order of magnitude short. This theory is more credible than sound intensity, so this is a case of "faith", awaiting the first scientific discovery of any array of neuron that create distinct firing pattern for input signal timed with 100 khz clock.
@@moiquiregardevideo No faith required. We 'only' need microsecond precision, not 100kHz firing rates. Furthermore, it doesn't need to be encoded by a single cell; population firing will do. And special adaptations exist to achieve this (e.g. Calyx of Held). From wikipedia with references (and plenty of literature on the subject): "Localization accuracy is 1 degree for sources in front of the listener and 15 degrees for sources to the sides. Humans can discern interaural time differences of 10 microseconds or less." en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_localization
Another amazing auditory feat: for the softest audible sounds, the amplitude of vibration of the eardrum is in the order of the diameter of a hydrogen atom. Nature never ceases to amaze!
@@landsgevaer Diameter of a hydrogen atom?!?!?! Incredible! Absolutely incredible. Do you happen to know the approximate "vibratory distance," so to speak, for the loudest sounds we can hear without damaging the ear?
This is how virtual surround sound on games and phones works for headphones! It processes the sounds with Interaural time differences and level delays. HRTF is amazing. Great video!
youll find that the pinna plays a vital role in creating tonal differences that make us perceive sounds externally, remove the pinna and just have a head it would be perceived inside your head. HRTF is overated, and thrown down our necks for some reason, while they dont explain the function of the pinna, the head isnt that important for creating binaural audio that it perceived externally when wearing headphones, so this proves that the head isnt required and that the pinna are the vital part of perception.
The easiest sound to locate is a downward frequency sweep - a chiieeaaoouu type sound. It incorporates as much frequency range as possible, and it has more temporal precision than white noise. More distinctive too.
Everyone hates my ringtone, but it uses these tricks to make my phone easy to locate. It's the sound of a helicopter engine starting. You first get the spool up sound, which is where I usually pick up my phone and either answer or reject the call, but if I can't find it amongst the cushions, the engine lights off, and you get the pile of white noise and roaring we all associate with a turbine engine, and I can zero in on the phone rather quickly. :P
When I was a kid I found it incredibly hard to locate a cricket. It's chirping and I have NO WAY of telling where the sound is coming from. Both ears work and I have excellent hearing. WTF?
Steve , I’m a huge fan and my son and I are binging on your channel. This is how you mix science with daily problems and that’s when people take more notice. We’ve just hidden each other’s phones and only my phone has the changed tone. Let’s do this. Btw this is helping our lockdown experience. Many thanks Steve.
I don't think so really and here's why... If you are at the gps location of the phone then you should be able to hear the white noise. Unless its upstairs and if that's the case you're more likely to hear the vibration than the tone. I think the Ambulance trials were a fantastic idea! It will be interesting to see if they plan to use it?!
I have a fax/modem sound as a ring tone, quite effective even at low volume, but now I know why it's easier to locate once the initial handshake part is over and there is basically white-noise. However I think a high pitch phase modulation is still necessary to help you distinguish white noise from background noise in the environment, so also the initial part of the sound is useful, because our mind tends to cancel white noise . The perfect ring tone would be a mix of the two (not really nice tho) I love your references to birds, we underestimate their abilities!
THANKSGIVING I have always instinctively while searching for a sound, placed both hands (like elephant ears) behind my ears then turn my head until the sound is loudest. It works especially well for frequencies that are hard to find.
Hey Steve, rusty balls guy here. Another great video, man! In my day job I design embedded control systems, and in the naughties I was leading the electronics and software development activities of a fair sized medical device corporation. One of the big changes coming through medical devices at that time was a standard for alarms (sad that I know it as EN60601-1-8). Anyway, before that, it was irritatingly common for medical devices to use high pitched pure tones from piezoelectric sounders. Cheap, and everybody was using them, so they sounded like real medical devices. But you could walk into a ward with one or two going off and using the sound you might not find which bay had the alarm until it was too late. The new standard requires complex alarm sounds, which can only be produced by a proper speaker, which contains a minimum amount of harmonic content, and defines pulse shapes and durations. It makes quite a difference to aural location. Oh, and they also should have visible alarms too (flashing lights) to augment the audible alarm. There are a whole load more requirements, but I’ll have bored you enough with that already!
I'm glad you covered this topic as it confirmed what I suspected to be the case. I always wandered why reversing sirens are now white noise instead of tones with a very narrow frequency band and figured this was probably why. They experimented with having narrow blasts of white noise on ambulances but it just confused people so that idea was abandoned.
In the UK. In the United States, more and more trucks are being installed with a narrow-band, high pitch beep which is very annoying in truckstops. This tone will penetrate a truck's interior disturbing a driver sleeping in the bunk. A driver inside his truck isn't in danger of being run over by a truck backing up. I wish truck manufacturers and companies would go to a broadband, white noise backing beeper. My truck has the narrow band beeper but I disconnect it; Old school know to put 4 way flashers ON, roll down the windows, and know what their backing up to.
An additional issue experienced by hard of hearing/deaf individuals is that the microphone on traditional hearing aids sits at the top of the ear, making that triangulation even more difficult. I'm more likely to hear the reflections of a sound, so it can be very funny - everyone turns to the source of an unexpected noise, whereas I look in completely the other direction! I often have to get my partner to 'find' a sound for me. Plus certain frequencies are just totally unavailable to me. Another great video - thanks, Steve!
That's some wonderful imagery of you and your friends. 😅 I am suddenly reminded of a random memory of slamming a waste bin and all the pigeons flying up, except for one that just kept on eating.😅
Love your reaction to the word "iTunes"...lol. I remember one day (long ago) importing a bunch of MP3s into itunes, then later when trying to copy them to another device I found out iTunes converted all the file names to seemingly random long stings of characters, and were no longer playable on other devices. Don't think I've bought an Apple product since.
You could also customize your ears by adding a tube and pointing it around in different places. Instead of the ear-reversing set-up, one with longer tubes that come out at the same place. This set up is also handy for locating the source of noises in particularly noisy, convoluted environments, like the engine compartment of a vehicle.
I’ve found the Find My iPhone tone is great for knowing which ROOM the phone is in, but then I’m left searching for over a minute under pillows. So a mix of high pitch and white noise would be great, but hey...Apple won’t let us change it.
I always thought the white noise on a vehicle reversing was them modifying it because the beep annoyed them. I always wondered this and never researched it. You have blown my mind, my favourite RUclipsr by far!
Yes if I gave you some nice feature that let you set your own tone it would be too nice now and i have to charge you more oh sorry wrong channel I mean you'd set it to some stupid tone that you'd never be able to find.
When I was 16, I designed a neural circuit able to use the interaural time difference to find sound sources, and immediately found out the flaw you mentioned, that of steady monotonic sounds. To test that flaw, I used a whistle and a dog. The dog was able to find the whistle's location if I blew short whistles, but unable if long. This was 50 years ago. I am no graduate but an amateur neuroscientist. But for 50 years, since I was six, I tried to understand how brains manage to build a mental model of the world, imagine, store information, recall it, plan, decide, and act accordingly. I got it ten years ago.
Interestingly, to locate up and down by your ear, the most important feature your body uses is the unique anatomy of your ear. If you just attach some modeling clay in the ear auricle, you start struggling to locate the source of noise. Smartereveryday did a video on that topic as well. (Highly recommended)
When he played the pure high-pitched tone, I turned my head a bit with my eyes closed and said "Oh that wasn't so hard to tell where my phone was." But when he played the white noise, I opened my eyes and I was looking exactly at my phone speaker. Wayyy more precision with the white noise
I hope Django has a good endorsement deal. He needs to monetize his brand if he ever wants to get 1,000 treats per video. ... Making a living on youtube is RUFF.
Did some numerical analysis projects with sound waves in college. Got a lot of intuition on how the ear tells directions, which is why I set my tile to use the ringtone that shifts the most in frequency. Still happy that someone gives a comprehensive breakdown on this topic.
The shape of human ears has this lovely shape to modify the relative harmonic proportion of sound vertically versus front/rear. When a sound has a sharp attack (intensity raising fast), such wave shape has many high frequency content. The Fourier analysis of AM modulation show an increase of bandwidth ; for example, a radio station emitting pure sine wave at 1 mhz (station number 100.0 on AM scale) with a modulation signal of 1 khz pure sine wave will show on a spectrometer a peek at 1000 khz with two lumps; one left at 999 khz and another right at 1001 khz. Using your radio receiver, on can hear that tone while changing the tuner frequency from 999 khz to 1001 khz, showing that this bandwidth phenomena is not a mathematical tricks ; it is real. As soon as a radio station has music or voice added, the transmitter frequency interfere with the nearby radio station with similar frequency. The louder and/or higher pitch music interfere with more distant frequencies. This bandwidth increase explains why each radio station must follow rules about the frequency of consecutive radio station. Brief, when a sound has a sharp attack, the relative amplitude of each harmonic allow us to tell the direction of sound up/down and front/rear. Combined with the precise timing difference mentioned in this video, humans detect sound direction over a complete sphere, 360 degrees in every direction. You may ask : does my dog, horse, ... has the same system? No, they rotate their hears to detect sound direction over a horizontal plane and tilt their head to rotate the plane which extends the hearing field vertically. Their system rely on the pray or predator to emit more than one sound while human know where is the sound source on the first shot. Our 360 sphere sound detection evolved when apes grew a brain so large that the ear lobes could not follow, it could not remain on top of the head. Most people devolved, losing muscle control of the ear lobes. But since our hearing system is superior, losing those muscle is really evolution. The very precise harmonic detection performed by the cochlea is as amazing as the echo location of bats. I give detail about the way it works on multiple messages on Quora. Search for "gingras cochlea" to find a few example and maybe update wikipedia page still mentioning "negative feedback" as reason for75% of cilias being motor vs 25% sensory.
The dogs tilt their heads in such a way that their ears are at different levels on the vertical axis, when their heads are at the normal position their ears are on different positions on the horizontal axis, but they are on the same position on the vertical axis, hence to know zero in on the height of the source of the sound, they kind of roll their heads.
It makes sense. When two identical repeating waves hit your ears at different times, after the initial time delay the maximum difference is half a wavelength no matter where your receivers are. Also, they will line up and go out of alignment repeatedly as you move your head. leaving volume difference to be the most substantial determining factor (I assume).
I've got hearing loss in one ear so determining which direction sounds are coming from can be difficult. Weirdly enough I can actually locate where sine waves are coming very quickly because the noise inputs to each ear is different so I pretty much know exactly where it's coming from so long as it is fairly loud.
Owls have one ear higher than the other to help locate sounds more accurately. This helps them tell front and back apart more easily and pinpoint the source. It’d probably comprise their vision a bit if they kept having to tilt their head
Awesome video! We were making augmented reality games using audio (and no video) a couple of years back. We used earphones and mounted the phone on the head of the player to track movement. Then using these audio manipulation techniques to place sounds in a virtual overlay of the world.
Very well explained. The 3rd means of localizing sound that we humans use, in addition to time differential and the frequency filtering of the pinna (the outer ear), we also use a volume differential. If a sound is louder on one side it sounds like it's coming from that side. Volume is the most common means of panning when mixing music, sometime we will attenuate some high frequencies from one side, or delay one side to give stereo placement, but most of the time it's just volume. The reason we tend to use volume rather than delay or filtering from an audio mixing standpoint (I'm an audio engineer professionally) is mono compatibility. When you have a signal slightly delayed in one channel relative to the other, and you sum those channels to mono you will get some phase cancellation, and it sounds weird. If you go with the filtering approach, attenuating some high frequencies from one side of the track) you get the opposite, a summation of both channels which results in a ~3dB increase in volume so it can throw your balance out of whack if you're not careful.
Its a shame Steve didnt mention the vital importance of the pinna, however, finding that info in reference books is like looking for hens teeth for some reason.. no idea why! maybe this is why it was overlooked.
I actually found your video by searching clip about interaural time different for my audio tech class. This is like learning the science and applied it to real life. Thank you so much.
Did they teach you anything about the vital importance of the pinna? if not, i think that part of the educational system is flawed, i believe even steve is just repeating what they say in books, as I think the pinna play a huge part in external perception of sound direction, sorry steve!
Ampphed Further to that, I used Node-Red (via Alexa, “Alexa, where is my phone?”) to call my phone, and Steve mentioned that he’s learning Node-Red in this video.
That demonstration was totally AMAZING!!!!! Sound can reach both ears simultaneously from a 360° circle (front above back and below) and this makes it more difficult to locate sound, but humans are pretty good at it. This is because of the outer ear shape. I saw a RUclips video where a guy tested a boy and he did just fine until he put putty around his ears to change the shape. It totally messed him up. Yeah, ringtones!!! Dear Google: Please let me set a different ring tone/notification tone for every app.
So kind of like how if I cross my eyes in a certain way in a tile room, the two images in my eyes will match 2 tiles together that are actually 2 different tiles?
dog tilts whole head. Cats just tilt ONE ear. And rotate it like the radar at airports! I envy my cats for this ability i don't have. One thing i do to hear sounds on the distance in noisy environment and improve range and clarity, that is to speak to someone on the other side of a big crowded room with lots of chatter is put my hands around my hears, the shape of cups, and orient towards the friend talking. It's incredible how you improve directionality and amplification and exclude ambient sound and only amplify the cone you're looking forward to! My cat never does anything like that to better listen to me!
I always thought it is so cool how such a small difference in the time the sound arrives at each ear is enough for us to determine left-right orientation of that sound so accurate. Though it doesn't exactly explains front-back and up-down. A SmarterEveryDay video explains that this has to do with how the shape of your ear influence how you receive sound and your brains conditioning to that. By changing the shape of your ear (with play dough) you lose most of that orientation. It's in the 2nd half of the video called "Shooting Down a Lost Drone and why Dogs Tilt their Heads"
Gentleman, I have to thank you a lot. Your content is accurate, on point and scientifically Correct. Now I can explain phase difference and psychoacoustics to my mum with your drawings :D ahah Jokes aside, MMmany greetings from Turin, Italy :)
Your white noise file sounds more like pink noise (equal energy per octave) than white noise (equal energy at different frequencies). Great video and explanation of the concept though.
My TV remote has a find the remote feature if you press a button on the TV. The remote has a speaker that plays white noise when the find feature was activated. Very useful, and I always wondered why it was white noise and not a nice beep or something. Great info!
I wonder if this was taken into account when they designed the "synthetic engine noise" for EVs. They are generally low pitch, and multiple different pitches at the same time, and kind of "burbling". That sounds perfect for this kind of detection. And I do indeed find them very easy to locate, even without looking.
I recently learned that we can also (unconsciously) slightly direct the small hairs in our ears, was hoping for you to mention that here, absolutely blew my mind when I heard it 😮
I have had this video in my watch later for nearly a year now and every time I saw the thumbnail I thought Steve's lady had an EEG cap on. Platinum dreadlocks are a bold look I have to respect it hahaha
I never thought it was hard to find my phone and was confused at why people found it hard, and then realized when the white noise bit was mentioned that it's easy to find my phone when I have someone else call it bc my phone is always on vibrate, and I'm listening for the more white noise-leaning sound of my phone vibrating against nearby surfaces and itself than the more sine wave-leaning noises phone ring tones tend to be
Great video. The shape of human ears also helps to pinpoint the sound direction. The shape causes echos which are dependent on the direction. A saw a video where a blind folded person could locate the direction well. The test was then repeated with something that changed the ear shape. The subject then failed to locate the sound. Dogs ears are all floppy so they are reliant on the head tilt...
indeed the pinna is vital for external sound perception and location, everyones ears are different shaped, and I believe like eyes, sometimes the person had bad eyesight, due to their eyes lenses being out of shape, the pinna also has a "good" shape and a "bad" shape, so some people are better at locating sounds than others, what do you make of the binaural recording examples on my channel? theres only a few, but they should be pretty effective, I manufacture the binaural microphones and have quite a bit of experience with binaural audio through experiments
Now imagine how this is even harder for someone with severe hearing loss in one ear. I have to physically turn my head/body to try and point my good ear toward the sound.
when dogs tilt their heads it can also cause their ears to flip over if they're a dog with floppy ears, which can also help them hear, this is less of a reason for the head tilting (which is why dogs with non-floppy ears do it too) but iirc it does contribute to the reason why sometimes dogs will tilt their head in the same direction multiple times in a row, it's like a little attempt to get the ear to flip up a little bit to let a little more sound in - again mostly it's about the depth perception but it's also just a little bit because floppy ears get in the way, at least that's what it is if im remembering correctly lol
A more accurate description of the area of confusion is probably a hyperboloid of confusion. However, more than a foot or two away from your head it is a very close approximation of a cone. The hyperboloid of confusion is more useful when describing locating a fly buzzing around your head. In this case the hyperboloid is more closely approximated by a disc.
I work in IT and we've got uninterruptsble power supplies at every worker's desk to run until our generators are up. Anywho - sometimes there's a random fault that starts them sending an alarm which is a perfect 3kHz tone. You'll see worker's up and wandering all over the offices trying to figure out where it's coming from. A lot of times the person whose desk it is inder isn't even aware it's their desk. This explains why perfectly!
Time delay also tells your brain how large of a room you are in. The echo time delay that is short amounts to small room and delay long amounts to larger room. When sound system has concert hall effect, they measure the time delay it take for sound to travel back and use that delay into the track you are playing thus reproducing same effect as if you are in the concert hall.
Damn this explains so much... Like you know the "psst" sound you make when whispering to someone? Probably because it's silent but effective, and a person quite far can find your direction.
Off the back of this video I composed some white noise ringtones which I now use and you can find here: drive.google.com/open?id=1VO5_DC8foNEHerITApTDdFuAsIUgGN1r The ones suffixed R have reverb. The others are dry. I'm a composer and accessible instrument maker www.humaninstruments.co.uk.
Dang it! Now I understand why I hear high pitch noises in wrong spots! Thanks for answering one of my sub-conscious questions!
Oh wow I didn't even see your username. Of course the best science RUclipsrs watch each other's videos!
I heard this comment in his voice lol
:o
The high pitch noise must be secondary effect from electro thermal expansion of gases that the electrical engineers expose themselves at a often frequent basis.
There are also reflections, the higher the frequency of sound the more directional it is
Default tones also just don't work for people that are hard of hearing. My father in law got a new phone - claimed that it was defective because he kept missing calls. Took it back to the store, they said it was fine, etc. Finally, he brought it to me. He is standing across the room, holding the phone, I call his phone, it starts ringing nice and loud, but no reaction at all from him.
I take the phone, go in to ring tones and just start making changes while I watch him. After playing a dozen or so with no reaction at all, I play one - he looks up - "You got it to ring?". Set that as his ring tone. Problem solved.
It's unfortunate that there's never anybody on the line when it rings.
interesting
Thanks for this comment. I'm always annoyed when people complain about my ringtone. I can't help having rubbish ears, I was born this way - it's one of the only tones I can hear. Ditto alarm clock tone! People with very impaired hearing actually use vibrating pads under their pillows for their alarms.
@@bordershader Wow, seems like I do the same thing by setting my phone to vibrate for my alarm and putting it under my pillow..
It's to avoid waking up my family
So I was actually wearing headphones and still tilted my head around like the biggest idiot. Turns out that the time delay becomes significantly less noticeable when the source of the sound turns with you...
This is something called internalisation, and the reference you want is Boyd, Akeroyd and Brimijoin (may have got the wrong order there) from about 2011 :)
geez. I'm wearing headphones, and all I thought was, "huh, it apparently doesn't work for me. weird". thanks for pointing out the actual reason...
You made my day xD
I was hoping for a second run in the video where he swept the delay between left and right channels to simulate it for us headphone users.
I just woke up and this sounds smart.. what is it u say?
It is easier to locate high pitched sounds if your ears are further from each other.
I once lived a place with a shared space with plants and we got a cicada somehow with some plants. It were driving us nuts with it's chirping, but we couldn't locate it until I held a 25 cm cardboard tube to each ear and walked around.
My neighbor were laughing so hard, but still was quite impressed when I found the critter :-)
"I don't know if you can tell from the video but Django is actually a GOOD BOY."
That part made me laugh so hard 🤣
He's such a good boy.
dirm12 we could tell! It was obvious he was a good boy!
I was fully ready for a science fact about something I maybe couldn't tell from the video and, y'know what? It was a science fact: Django is a very good boy.
Kinda hijacking this to say...
If ya like good boys and love the cute head tilt... Then go check out an old vlogbrothers song by Hank Green, This song is for Willy. It's entirely full of weird and potentially new noises designed for making a cute little puppers tilt their head a bunch to the new sounds.
There's also several vids around the same post date that include Willy listening to the song and just Willy being cute.
In music production we usually arrange sounds in the stereo field using the pan control - basically altering the balance of the amplitude between the left and right channels.
But, just like this video, you can use what's called a Haas Delay instead, which alters the time relationship between left and right instead. The downside is you might run into phase cancellation issues if your stereo mix is ever collapsed into mono, what we call 'mono compatibility'.
That’s not quite accurate. The left/right shift of the perceived sound source mostly happens with delay times between 1-3ms, Haas‘ research was on larger latencies. He found out that even for latencies as big as 35ms the first wavefront arriving dictates the perceived direction of the sound, even when the succeeding signals are louder. The Haas-effect is mostly used in PA systems at concerts or talks: the sound is delayed in a way that the original sound reaches the audience first so they locate the sound correctly, and then the amplified sound reaches them to ensure everything is heard properly
There's also interaural level difference ILD and it's the second way of our brain telling us the location of a sound usually works better for higher frequencies... the ITD (which is covered in this video) works better for lower frequencies
That's why there are the AB and the XY micing technique
This is content. Holy moly. I never knew how badly I wanted to know the things you just told me until you told them to me but I am very glad that you did.
Well said
Well said x 2
Well said x3
That is the sum explanation of 99% of the time I spend on RUclips.
Well said x5 (on behalf of Bumpy guy)
And of course...
*Well said x6*
1:00 Steve experiments science on his better half
2:00 How you detect where a sound is coming from
3:30 Why some sounds are difficult to locate
5:50 How to change the find phone tune for Android (easy)
6:00 How to change for iPhone (you can't)
7:00 How birds make use of this
7:50 Why police sirens are difficult to locate and what can be done about it
9:50 Django is a good boy!
Amazing video Steve, as always - and thanks! :)
Delighted by the last bookmark! 😀
4:15 experience it for yourself
These timestamps are so deliciously well rounded
The ambulances I heard in Paris were much easier to locate by sound than any other I've heard. They use the same siren in Morocco as well. It has two pitches that switch sharply between each other. This gives you both direction due to the inter-aural time difference at the alternation. And it gives you a sense of how fast it is coming or going because it is always the same two pitches so you can sense the Doppler effect. Sirens that smoothly rise and fall in pitch make both speed and location hard to hear.
If you watch some old TV or films, UK sirens used to be similar once upon a time.
Lies of spies ! Craft work. Gentlemen
fun-fact. comment on 8:50 - the exact position can also be located thanks to the structure of our ears, which changes the incoming sound in different ways if it's coming from different directions.
If the sound is coming from your right hemisphere, then your left ear will not change the shape of the sound wave, however, the right ear will. And once our brain lined up one signal to the other, it will look at how it was distorted to find out not only the horizontal but also the vertical angle of the incoming sound. Moreover, it does so for multiple sounds coming from different directions, which is absolutely amazing. It really blows my mind how complex is the analysis of the incoming sound, that our brain does non-stop 24/7 like nothing.
UPD: dog's can't do this ear-shape-distortion-analysis, which is why they tilt their head every time.
For low freqs, phase differences provide good cues, but not for high freqs, as explained. I'm always amazed that the brain can detect lags down to about 10 MICROseconds!
However, for high freqs, intensity differences are useful, due to the head shadow effect, whereas for low freqs that doesn't work well because long wavelengths bend around.
So these are somewhat complementary cues.
And then there are transfer functions due to the intricate shape of the ear that leads to interference patterns, the best cue for elevation and front/back localization that doesn't require head rotation.
So a noise that is high frequency and low frequency would be good for identification (aka white noise) because of these complimentary parts
The most important is to not be sinusoidal and have sharp attack (sound intensity rising quickly).
The precise measurement of timing between both ears, given sound speed of 330 meters per second and normal head size require a mechanism precise to the ~10 microsecond level.
The fastest neurons can create burst at 1 khz, so we are 2 order of magnitude short.
This theory is more credible than sound intensity, so this is a case of "faith", awaiting the first scientific discovery of any array of neuron that create distinct firing pattern for input signal timed with 100 khz clock.
@@moiquiregardevideo No faith required. We 'only' need microsecond precision, not 100kHz firing rates. Furthermore, it doesn't need to be encoded by a single cell; population firing will do. And special adaptations exist to achieve this (e.g. Calyx of Held).
From wikipedia with references (and plenty of literature on the subject): "Localization accuracy is 1 degree for sources in front of the listener and 15 degrees for sources to the sides. Humans can discern interaural time differences of 10 microseconds or less." en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_localization
Another amazing auditory feat: for the softest audible sounds, the amplitude of vibration of the eardrum is in the order of the diameter of a hydrogen atom. Nature never ceases to amaze!
@@landsgevaer Diameter of a hydrogen atom?!?!?! Incredible! Absolutely incredible.
Do you happen to know the approximate "vibratory distance," so to speak, for the loudest sounds we can hear without damaging the ear?
After watching your videos i realise your wife is a very tolerant and special person. My wife says things like can you stop talking now!
That bit about the bird calls was super interesting! Always love your stuff!
-a 3rd year mechanical engineering student
Thanks!
The bird call triggered my cat and now he searches around the living room 😸
"Make your phone easier to find, with science" ...oh that sounds boring.
*Oh, it's a Steve Mould video!*
*_Clicks_*
Saaaaame. I skipped it earlier today, and now I saw it was him
true that
Just remember where you left it Dummy !
excellent video as always Steve. Keep it up!
Thanks!
@@SteveMould it's time to defend your fountain again!
This is how virtual surround sound on games and phones works for headphones! It processes the sounds with Interaural time differences and level delays. HRTF is amazing. Great video!
youll find that the pinna plays a vital role in creating tonal differences that make us perceive sounds externally, remove the pinna and just have a head it would be perceived inside your head. HRTF is overated, and thrown down our necks for some reason, while they dont explain the function of the pinna, the head isnt that important for creating binaural audio that it perceived externally when wearing headphones, so this proves that the head isnt required and that the pinna are the vital part of perception.
This is one of the most interesting and multi-disciplinary youtube videos I've seen!
The easiest sound to locate is a downward frequency sweep - a chiieeaaoouu type sound. It incorporates as much frequency range as possible, and it has more temporal precision than white noise. More distinctive too.
How'd you learn that?
It's also much more annoying.
The problem with this video is the people who need it most can't watch it.
You can watch it on the phone of the friend who would be calling your phone. Sadly you still have to find your phone eventually.
Step one: get your phone. Oh.
What, nobody has a real computer any more? Just me?
Angel with the Phonebox [Angel Bear] never got a joke?
What, birds?
Everyone hates my ringtone, but it uses these tricks to make my phone easy to locate. It's the sound of a helicopter engine starting. You first get the spool up sound, which is where I usually pick up my phone and either answer or reject the call, but if I can't find it amongst the cushions, the engine lights off, and you get the pile of white noise and roaring we all associate with a turbine engine, and I can zero in on the phone rather quickly. :P
When I was a kid I found it incredibly hard to locate a cricket. It's chirping and I have NO WAY of telling where the sound is coming from. Both ears work and I have excellent hearing. WTF?
Crickets are HARD to locate. Their chirps are high pitched and short (probably pretty pure tone too) and then the cricket shuts up when you get close.
Did you have hair over the tops of your ears as a child? I learned once that the top handles higher-frequency sounds.
@@gildedbear5355 Why is that actually? Arent these sounds supposed to help them find each other?
@@NiejakiZoxico ah, but just because they are hard to locate for us doesn't mean that it's hard for them.
@@NiejakiZoxico Yes, if I recall it properly they produce the sound for reproductive purposes. Are the males calling the females.
Steve , I’m a huge fan and my son and I are binging on your channel. This is how you mix science with daily problems and that’s when people take more notice. We’ve just hidden each other’s phones and only my phone has the changed tone. Let’s do this. Btw this is helping our lockdown experience. Many thanks Steve.
Higher pitch makes it easier to find the phone from longer distances.
Which is probably more important.
So we need a combined white noise + high pitch ringtone?
This is a very good point.
I don't think so really and here's why...
If you are at the gps location of the phone then you should be able to hear the white noise.
Unless its upstairs and if that's the case you're more likely to hear the vibration than the tone.
I think the Ambulance trials were a fantastic idea! It will be interesting to see if they plan to use it?!
I think it should alternate so we would have bought advantages.
@@photelegy I'm gonna make a new ringtone!
I have a fax/modem sound as a ring tone, quite effective even at low volume, but now I know why it's easier to locate once the initial handshake part is over and there is basically white-noise. However I think a high pitch phase modulation is still necessary to help you distinguish white noise from background noise in the environment, so also the initial part of the sound is useful, because our mind tends to cancel white noise . The perfect ring tone would be a mix of the two (not really nice tho)
I love your references to birds, we underestimate their abilities!
THANKSGIVING
I have always instinctively while searching for a sound, placed both hands (like elephant ears) behind my ears then turn my head until the sound is loudest. It works especially well for frequencies that are hard to find.
How are you so factual and educational but not annoying and pretentious? It's truly remarkable.
Hey Steve, rusty balls guy here. Another great video, man! In my day job I design embedded control systems, and in the naughties I was leading the electronics and software development activities of a fair sized medical device corporation. One of the big changes coming through medical devices at that time was a standard for alarms (sad that I know it as EN60601-1-8). Anyway, before that, it was irritatingly common for medical devices to use high pitched pure tones from piezoelectric sounders. Cheap, and everybody was using them, so they sounded like real medical devices. But you could walk into a ward with one or two going off and using the sound you might not find which bay had the alarm until it was too late. The new standard requires complex alarm sounds, which can only be produced by a proper speaker, which contains a minimum amount of harmonic content, and defines pulse shapes and durations. It makes quite a difference to aural location. Oh, and they also should have visible alarms too (flashing lights) to augment the audible alarm. There are a whole load more requirements, but I’ll have bored you enough with that already!
Interesting. I assume there is a ASIC for this? do you have the part number? the geek in me wants to read the datasheet.
Hey, that's really interesting! Great to know people are thinking about these things.
I watched this yrs ago, RUclips brought it back. I must say this, Your wife is Stunning, wow! Keep up the great videos
i usually find it very easy to hear the cop sirens blaring behind me
Loki, I concede
If they're right behind me with lights blaring yes; but ambulances some distance away aren't immediately directionally recognizable.
It's A JOKE GUYS
R\woosh
I'm glad you covered this topic as it confirmed what I suspected to be the case. I always wandered why reversing sirens are now white noise instead of tones with a very narrow frequency band and figured this was probably why. They experimented with having narrow blasts of white noise on ambulances but it just confused people so that idea was abandoned.
5:46 just an extra. That might be why modern trucks and lorries use white noise when reversing rather than beeping.
Edit: should've finished the video
In the UK. In the United States, more and more trucks are being installed with a narrow-band, high pitch beep which is very annoying in truckstops. This tone will penetrate a truck's interior disturbing a driver sleeping in the bunk. A driver inside his truck isn't in danger of being run over by a truck backing up. I wish truck manufacturers and companies would go to a broadband, white noise backing beeper. My truck has the narrow band beeper but I disconnect it; Old school know to put 4 way flashers ON, roll down the windows, and know what their backing up to.
The trucks I hear sound like an eagle being strangled when they reverse.
They should use a mix of a beep and white noise.
I've found the reason my preferred method of scrolling through comments (middle click and cursor movement) only lets me go horizontally...
An additional issue experienced by hard of hearing/deaf individuals is that the microphone on traditional hearing aids sits at the top of the ear, making that triangulation even more difficult. I'm more likely to hear the reflections of a sound, so it can be very funny - everyone turns to the source of an unexpected noise, whereas I look in completely the other direction! I often have to get my partner to 'find' a sound for me. Plus certain frequencies are just totally unavailable to me. Another great video - thanks, Steve!
That's some wonderful imagery of you and your friends. 😅 I am suddenly reminded of a random memory of slamming a waste bin and all the pigeons flying up, except for one that just kept on eating.😅
Love your reaction to the word "iTunes"...lol. I remember one day (long ago) importing a bunch of MP3s into itunes, then later when trying to copy them to another device I found out iTunes converted all the file names to seemingly random long stings of characters, and were no longer playable on other devices. Don't think I've bought an Apple product since.
That hasn't been the case in like.... 18 years? iTunes naming is perfectly fine.
You could also customize your ears by adding a tube and pointing it around in different places. Instead of the ear-reversing set-up, one with longer tubes that come out at the same place. This set up is also handy for locating the source of noises in particularly noisy, convoluted environments, like the engine compartment of a vehicle.
I’ve found the Find My iPhone tone is great for knowing which ROOM the phone is in, but then I’m left searching for over a minute under pillows. So a mix of high pitch and white noise would be great, but hey...Apple won’t let us change it.
Now I understand why Steve always looks so happy. Lucky guy.
Finally an explanation why I can never find the ambulance. I though it was only my handicap.
I always thought the white noise on a vehicle reversing was them modifying it because the beep annoyed them. I always wondered this and never researched it. You have blown my mind, my favourite RUclipsr by far!
I can't stop laughing between 6:00 and 6:30. I played it 10 times and it's still funny.
It's not a flaw, it's an iPhone feature
Me too pmsl.
Yes if I gave you some nice feature that let you set your own tone it would be too nice now and i have to charge you more oh sorry wrong channel I mean you'd set it to some stupid tone that you'd never be able to find.
Yup, I loved that too. A great way to say "Apple hegemony sucks" without alienating all the iPhone owners.
Apple: you shouldn't be losing your $1000 phone
When I was 16, I designed a neural circuit able to use the interaural time difference to find sound sources, and immediately found out the flaw you mentioned, that of steady monotonic sounds. To test that flaw, I used a whistle and a dog. The dog was able to find the whistle's location if I blew short whistles, but unable if long.
This was 50 years ago.
I am no graduate but an amateur neuroscientist. But for 50 years, since I was six, I tried to understand how brains manage to build a mental model of the world, imagine, store information, recall it, plan, decide, and act accordingly. I got it ten years ago.
Interestingly, to locate up and down by your ear, the most important feature your body uses is the unique anatomy of your ear. If you just attach some modeling clay in the ear auricle, you start struggling to locate the source of noise.
Smartereveryday did a video on that topic as well. (Highly recommended)
When he played the pure high-pitched tone, I turned my head a bit with my eyes closed and said "Oh that wasn't so hard to tell where my phone was."
But when he played the white noise, I opened my eyes and I was looking exactly at my phone speaker. Wayyy more precision with the white noise
You didn't pet your good boy 0/10 video.
He had to put the camera away to give a proper pet, that's why it was not included in the video
@@RodrigoCastroAngelo quite right. Django deserves a two handed pet.
We need a follow up
This situation clearly calls for a tripod.
He pet it with captioning
I hope Django has a good endorsement deal. He needs to monetize his brand if he ever wants to get 1,000 treats per video.
... Making a living on youtube is RUFF.
Change your ringtone to just shout: YOU´LL NEVER FIND ME!
Alternatively... "Hey! Listen!"
"Marco!"
Did some numerical analysis projects with sound waves in college. Got a lot of intuition on how the ear tells directions, which is why I set my tile to use the ringtone that shifts the most in frequency. Still happy that someone gives a comprehensive breakdown on this topic.
The shape of human ears has this lovely shape to modify the relative harmonic proportion of sound vertically versus front/rear.
When a sound has a sharp attack (intensity raising fast), such wave shape has many high frequency content. The Fourier analysis of AM modulation show an increase of bandwidth ; for example, a radio station emitting pure sine wave at 1 mhz (station number 100.0 on AM scale) with a modulation signal of 1 khz pure sine wave will show on a spectrometer a peek at 1000 khz with two lumps; one left at 999 khz and another right at 1001 khz.
Using your radio receiver, on can hear that tone while changing the tuner frequency from 999 khz to 1001 khz, showing that this bandwidth phenomena is not a mathematical tricks ; it is real.
As soon as a radio station has music or voice added, the transmitter frequency interfere with the nearby radio station with similar frequency. The louder and/or higher pitch music interfere with more distant frequencies.
This bandwidth increase explains why each radio station must follow rules about the frequency of consecutive radio station.
Brief, when a sound has a sharp attack, the relative amplitude of each harmonic allow us to tell the direction of sound up/down and front/rear.
Combined with the precise timing difference mentioned in this video, humans detect sound direction over a complete sphere, 360 degrees in every direction.
You may ask : does my dog, horse, ... has the same system? No, they rotate their hears to detect sound direction over a horizontal plane and tilt their head to rotate the plane which extends the hearing field vertically.
Their system rely on the pray or predator to emit more than one sound while human know where is the sound source on the first shot.
Our 360 sphere sound detection evolved when apes grew a brain so large that the ear lobes could not follow, it could not remain on top of the head.
Most people devolved, losing muscle control of the ear lobes. But since our hearing system is superior, losing those muscle is really evolution.
The very precise harmonic detection performed by the cochlea is as amazing as the echo location of bats. I give detail about the way it works on multiple messages on Quora. Search for "gingras cochlea" to find a few example and maybe update wikipedia page still mentioning "negative feedback" as reason for75% of cilias being motor vs 25% sensory.
Christian, thank you for your post, every day really is a school day.
The dogs tilt their heads in such a way that their ears are at different levels on the vertical axis, when their heads are at the normal position their ears are on different positions on the horizontal axis, but they are on the same position on the vertical axis, hence to know zero in on the height of the source of the sound, they kind of roll their heads.
Yes I just said the same thing just not as well im surprised people don't know this. It makes so much sense when you think about it 🤔
Steve, I like you and your channel. So much that I just bought one of your books for my grandson.
Hey, thanks David. I really appreciate that. Hope he likes it.
It makes sense. When two identical repeating waves hit your ears at different times, after the initial time delay the maximum difference is half a wavelength no matter where your receivers are. Also, they will line up and go out of alignment repeatedly as you move your head. leaving volume difference to be the most substantial determining factor (I assume).
I've got hearing loss in one ear so determining which direction sounds are coming from can be difficult. Weirdly enough I can actually locate where sine waves are coming very quickly because the noise inputs to each ear is different so I pretty much know exactly where it's coming from so long as it is fairly loud.
Owls have one ear higher than the other to help locate sounds more accurately. This helps them tell front and back apart more easily and pinpoint the source. It’d probably comprise their vision a bit if they kept having to tilt their head
Awesome video! We were making augmented reality games using audio (and no video) a couple of years back. We used earphones and mounted the phone on the head of the player to track movement. Then using these audio manipulation techniques to place sounds in a virtual overlay of the world.
Sounds awesome!
Very well explained. The 3rd means of localizing sound that we humans use, in addition to time differential and the frequency filtering of the pinna (the outer ear), we also use a volume differential. If a sound is louder on one side it sounds like it's coming from that side.
Volume is the most common means of panning when mixing music, sometime we will attenuate some high frequencies from one side, or delay one side to give stereo placement, but most of the time it's just volume.
The reason we tend to use volume rather than delay or filtering from an audio mixing standpoint (I'm an audio engineer professionally) is mono compatibility. When you have a signal slightly delayed in one channel relative to the other, and you sum those channels to mono you will get some phase cancellation, and it sounds weird. If you go with the filtering approach, attenuating some high frequencies from one side of the track) you get the opposite, a summation of both channels which results in a ~3dB increase in volume so it can throw your balance out of whack if you're not careful.
Its a shame Steve didnt mention the vital importance of the pinna, however, finding that info in reference books is like looking for hens teeth for some reason.. no idea why! maybe this is why it was overlooked.
Natural aliasing, wow, that's amassing.
I actually found your video by searching clip about interaural time different for my audio tech class. This is like learning the science and applied it to real life. Thank you so much.
Did they teach you anything about the vital importance of the pinna? if not, i think that part of the educational system is flawed, i believe even steve is just repeating what they say in books, as I think the pinna play a huge part in external perception of sound direction, sorry steve!
How strange, I just voip called my phone to find it, only to see a notification for this video on the screen. What a coincidence!
I planned it this way.
And it's all thanks to the law of large numbers.
Well the two of you do, for a start :P
Google's algorithm knows everything
Ampphed
Further to that, I used Node-Red (via Alexa, “Alexa, where is my phone?”) to call my phone, and Steve mentioned that he’s learning Node-Red in this video.
That demonstration was totally AMAZING!!!!!
Sound can reach both ears simultaneously from a 360° circle (front above back and below) and this makes it more difficult to locate sound, but humans are pretty good at it. This is because of the outer ear shape. I saw a RUclips video where a guy tested a boy and he did just fine until he put putty around his ears to change the shape. It totally messed him up.
Yeah, ringtones!!! Dear Google: Please let me set a different ring tone/notification tone for every app.
When I use 'find my phone' I use the ring to find the room, then find it via vibration
I can't believe I knew all of this and still didn't understand why i can't locate some sounds. Thank you, sir!
So kind of like how if I cross my eyes in a certain way in a tile room, the two images in my eyes will match 2 tiles together that are actually 2 different tiles?
Just found this channel now can't stop watching all of your videos .Can't find such amazing content anywhere on RUclips!
Thanks! Glad you're enjoying then.
"I'm going to make my wife wear it and do some experiments"
Only works if your wife's named Peggy.
I love how you investigate the most peculiar thing. Very intriguing!
"You can't... do it.. on iphone." Synopsis of everything apple.
Adorable beginning! "I'm cold" oh and the dog is such a sweetheart too!
7:27 I was expecting an image of a different nature based on that description.
dog tilts whole head. Cats just tilt ONE ear. And rotate it like the radar at airports! I envy my cats for this ability i don't have. One thing i do to hear sounds on the distance in noisy environment and improve range and clarity, that is to speak to someone on the other side of a big crowded room with lots of chatter is put my hands around my hears, the shape of cups, and orient towards the friend talking. It's incredible how you improve directionality and amplification and exclude ambient sound and only amplify the cone you're looking forward to! My cat never does anything like that to better listen to me!
Steve Mould Thank You for the headphone warning (tinnitus here)
What is that
It shouldnt effect tinnitus. If anything it would effect people without tinnitus more
@@BijBijTCG
Tinnitus is a bloody annoying constant high pitch ringing in your ears.
I always thought it is so cool how such a small difference in the time the sound arrives at each ear is enough for us to determine left-right orientation of that sound so accurate.
Though it doesn't exactly explains front-back and up-down. A SmarterEveryDay video explains that this has to do with how the shape of your ear influence how you receive sound and your brains conditioning to that. By changing the shape of your ear (with play dough) you lose most of that orientation. It's in the 2nd half of the video called "Shooting Down a Lost Drone and why Dogs Tilt their Heads"
Martyn Cook this is want i was going to mention, but see you beat me by 6 months 😄
I only have one functional ear very frustrating. I have learned to shake my head back and forth to locate sounds.
pep1dog1 same here. It’s really frustrating!
me2
Mind. Blown. I'm never going to not think about this now whenever i hear a sound that throws me off.
Gentleman,
I have to thank you a lot. Your content is accurate, on point and scientifically Correct.
Now I can explain phase difference and psychoacoustics to my mum with your drawings :D ahah
Jokes aside, MMmany greetings from Turin, Italy :)
9:33 That confused look is so funny! It's like he's asking "Steve, what the heck is that?!?"
Clearly, Django is a good boy, yes. Excuse me but I must just go and present some test tones to my dog, who is also a good boy.
Your white noise file sounds more like pink noise (equal energy per octave) than white noise (equal energy at different frequencies). Great video and explanation of the concept though.
Hey Steve! You two are a very cute couple. Great job on the awesome videos!
My TV remote has a find the remote feature if you press a button on the TV. The remote has a speaker that plays white noise when the find feature was activated. Very useful, and I always wondered why it was white noise and not a nice beep or something. Great info!
Look at the guy showing off his wife :P
I wonder if this was taken into account when they designed the "synthetic engine noise" for EVs. They are generally low pitch, and multiple different pitches at the same time, and kind of "burbling". That sounds perfect for this kind of detection. And I do indeed find them very easy to locate, even without looking.
Anytime you want to do another video on sound, I will listen and give it a thumbs-up. This was great. Also, the links were great. Thank you!
Steve, your presentation is so great. Love that I found this channel.
I recently learned that we can also (unconsciously) slightly direct the small hairs in our ears, was hoping for you to mention that here, absolutely blew my mind when I heard it 😮
You may think I'm being facetious when I call this kind of content riveting, but I enjoy it sooo much. Thank you!
I am iPhone user and his dig on iphone is what made me subscribe :)
I have had this video in my watch later for nearly a year now and every time I saw the thumbnail I thought Steve's lady had an EEG cap on. Platinum dreadlocks are a bold look I have to respect it hahaha
Great Video! Rarely do I still get surprised by educational videos on youtube but yours are somehow a lot more refreshing then the rest on here.
I never thought it was hard to find my phone and was confused at why people found it hard, and then realized when the white noise bit was mentioned that it's easy to find my phone when I have someone else call it bc my phone is always on vibrate, and I'm listening for the more white noise-leaning sound of my phone vibrating against nearby surfaces and itself than the more sine wave-leaning noises phone ring tones tend to be
Great video. The shape of human ears also helps to pinpoint the sound direction. The shape causes echos which are dependent on the direction. A saw a video where a blind folded person could locate the direction well. The test was then repeated with something that changed the ear shape. The subject then failed to locate the sound. Dogs ears are all floppy so they are reliant on the head tilt...
indeed the pinna is vital for external sound perception and location, everyones ears are different shaped, and I believe like eyes, sometimes the person had bad eyesight, due to their eyes lenses being out of shape, the pinna also has a "good" shape and a "bad" shape, so some people are better at locating sounds than others, what do you make of the binaural recording examples on my channel? theres only a few, but they should be pretty effective, I manufacture the binaural microphones and have quite a bit of experience with binaural audio through experiments
Now imagine how this is even harder for someone with severe hearing loss in one ear. I have to physically turn my head/body to try and point my good ear toward the sound.
Is this why it's so dang hard to find crickets?!?!
when dogs tilt their heads it can also cause their ears to flip over if they're a dog with floppy ears, which can also help them hear, this is less of a reason for the head tilting (which is why dogs with non-floppy ears do it too) but iirc it does contribute to the reason why sometimes dogs will tilt their head in the same direction multiple times in a row, it's like a little attempt to get the ear to flip up a little bit to let a little more sound in - again mostly it's about the depth perception but it's also just a little bit because floppy ears get in the way, at least that's what it is if im remembering correctly lol
A more accurate description of the area of confusion is probably a hyperboloid of confusion.
However, more than a foot or two away from your head it is a very close approximation of a cone.
The hyperboloid of confusion is more useful when describing locating a fly buzzing around your head.
In this case the hyperboloid is more closely approximated by a disc.
I work in IT and we've got uninterruptsble power supplies at every worker's desk to run until our generators are up. Anywho - sometimes there's a random fault that starts them sending an alarm which is a perfect 3kHz tone. You'll see worker's up and wandering all over the offices trying to figure out where it's coming from. A lot of times the person whose desk it is inder isn't even aware it's their desk. This explains why perfectly!
Time delay also tells your brain how large of a room you are in. The echo time delay that is short amounts to small room and delay long amounts to larger room. When sound system has concert hall effect, they measure the time delay it take for sound to travel back and use that delay into the track you are playing thus reproducing same effect as if you are in the concert hall.
I opened up audacity to test this. Pretty cool stuff!
Damn this explains so much... Like you know the "psst" sound you make when whispering to someone? Probably because it's silent but effective, and a person quite far can find your direction.
I was watching the video at 1.75x and had to switch to 1x to experience those sound effects effectively.
Off the back of this video I composed some white noise ringtones which I now use and you can find here:
drive.google.com/open?id=1VO5_DC8foNEHerITApTDdFuAsIUgGN1r
The ones suffixed R have reverb. The others are dry.
I'm a composer and accessible instrument maker www.humaninstruments.co.uk.
3:16 "The exact angle would depend on the size of your head". What did I just hear on 360°? My ears feel entertained and so close to each other!