Everything that didn’t make the cut - Audio Illusions
Added 2024-08-19 14:36:20 +0000 UTCHi everyone!
Thank you so much for your feedback and support for the last video about Audio Illusions. There is so much about this topic that didn’t make it to the final draft, so I thought I would make an extras video! Here is the slideshow I was using, and it includes all the links I reference. I even left out stuff from this extras video….
The expert I mention is John C Middlebrooks.
Something I forgot:
Is processing in the cocktail party problem hereditary? One thing I find really interesting about this problem is the variance within my own family.
My mom is really good at this, and she’s able to not only focus on the target speaker, she’s also able to process ‘ignored’ voices.
Example: She’s speaking to her brother at a party, and her sister asks someone else about where she can find a baby bottle. My mom turns, answers her sister’s question, and then effortlessly turns back to the conversation with her brother.
We first thought that the difference was growing up in a big family (she is the second oldest of ten), but that doesn’t follow because I’m the second oldest of eight! I often struggle to focus on one voice in a noisy environment, much less understand and react to ignored voices. I’d love to know how you guys fair with the cocktail party problem.
Here's the full YouTube video in case you missed it!
Thank you for all your support and encouragement!
-Sulli and the Veritasium Team
Comments
Hey Veritasium team, this was a great video. I found it very interesting to know the explanation of why I have very good hearing but can't distinguish individual voices at cocktail parties if there's a lot of background noise. My ears are shaped a little differently than most. The pinnas are very open and lack the little fold (antitragus) that holds earbuds in. This effectively means the individual voice's frequencies are not reflected, attenuated, and filtered well for me–making it harder to pick out individual voices when there's a lot of background noise. I'm 29, so it's not age-related. It's consistent with what you've shown in the video.
Tanner Janesky
2024-08-20 14:45:53 +0000 UTCA propos the cocktail conversation comprehension phenomenon, I have personally noticed that with age my ability to follow a single conversation among many or in a noisy environment has significantly decreased. I am now 72 and recall that 50 years ago this ability was quite good. Btw, I liked your video better than Derek's! The details you mention were very interesting! (Full disclosure: I didn't watch the final version of the Veritasium video but the preview that was released to Patreons a few days earlier).
Gregor Shapiro
2024-08-20 09:35:43 +0000 UTCAh. It looks like the writer of that abstract for the Encyclopedia Britannica got "9ft cube" mixed up with "9 cubic ft". Slight bit of difference
chromicacid
2024-08-19 23:11:49 +0000 UTCThank you for this additional information! I like your explanation of the reasons some people may have heard some things differently. I did watch the original video two times, once with higher quality headphones, and all of the audio illusions we apparent as described. Then, I watched this on the living room TV with the connected soundbar, which is of pretty good quality, and I could not hear all of the audio illusions, especially the right-left stuff. I think the reproduction of the sound being closer to my ears when using the headphones, and farther from my ears when using the soundbar, is mostly the cause of a difference in perception, but I also have some hearing loss. Thank you for putting this together and I look forward to the Next Veritassium video!
Charles S. Cook
2024-08-19 18:40:28 +0000 UTCAbout missing fundamental. When I was first listening to the Patreon preview on my phone I could hear both tones but I didn't notice the illusion. When I was then listening to the final YouTube upload on in-ear buds the illusion was very clear even though I knew about it.
Bartosz Błaszkiewicz
2024-08-19 15:32:07 +0000 UTC
