@ 7.00a.m. on the 1st. jan., my 4 year-old said "why does everything sound
nicer?"........across the city there was no traffic noise whatsoever, with
the result that every tiny sound was magnified, and further, quite distant
sounds could be heard, with their distance information intact. The result
was a "3-d" soundscape with enormous depth of field, which was
correspondingly interesting (at least to sad cases like him and me!).
Thius impinges on the earlier discussion about traffic noise/birdsong,
because the nature of 'masking' effected by traffic is not just the
'drowning out' of certain sounds by certain other sounds, but the fact that
the sounding relationships between objects and their environment cannot
properly be heard, and the result is that the world becomes less "spatial"
in that there is little or no perceived 'depth of field', the result of
which is akin to the 'in one's head' perception yielded by headphone
listening. A similar situation can be observed with cycle riding, where the
wind noise is the masker, and its the same at sea in a storm (its always
windier at sea, anyway).
just a few thoughts,
happy new year/century/millenium.
ppl
Peter Lennox
Hardwick House
tel: (0114) 2661509
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
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