ABSTRACT
CHAPTER OUTLINE The Outer Ear.............................................................................................................................47 The Middle Ear.......................................................................................................................... 48 The Inner Ear ............................................................................................................................. 48 Sensitivity of The Ear..............................................................................................................49 Hearing Loss ...............................................................................................................................49 The Ear as a Frequency Analyzer ......................................................................................50 Loudness as a Function of Frequency .............................................................................50 Loudness as a Function of the Sound Field ..................................................................50 Loudness as a Function of the Duration of a Signal...................................................51 Masking ......................................................................................................................................... 53 Forward and Backward Masking......................................................................................... 53 Audibility of Peaks and Dips ................................................................................................54 The Law of the First Wave Front ...................................................................................... 55 Bibliography.................................................................................................................................56
Hearing is one of man’s senses. Many would say the most important. How the
sense of hearing actually works is still the subject of research. Only a brief
review of the function of the ear will be given here. Selected important elements
from psychoacoustics (the field that encompasses human perception of sound)
will be presented.
