Right/Left ear - equal/selective hearing?

[sunbird]

Do we hear music differently with each ear?

I haven’t done any research on this, but lately, from my own experience, I have started to wonder if our ears hear the tones ranges in a selective way…

Does a pianist hear his playing in a different way than a violinist or flutist?

The piano is built in such a way that the player’s right ear is closer to the higher keys while his left ear is closer to the lower keys.
Is this coincidence, or was the first ‘piano’ constructed intentionally in such a way because a certain natural phenomenon dictated the direction of lower to higher tones?
Does it mean that a pianist hears the tones differently with each ear?

On the other hand, a flutist’s ears are at the same distance and location from the sounds produced.
Does it mean that a flutist hears the tones equally with both ears?

Or… does it have to do with a person’s natural inclination, like right/left handedness, gender, age etc.?



Yudit

[Reegs]

My guess would be that the ears develop equally in the womb but change as they grow into their environment.

I know the frequency response in my ears is different (I had them tested :p). It's probably the result of playing in a big band with a loud trumpet player on my left and a drummer on my right.

But I'm curious too, if, say, sleeping preferentially on one side affects how our ears change over time.

[robh]

Don't forget the effect of driving with your window down for your left ear (right ear, for you Aussies, Brits, Kiwis, Japanese, and whoever else I missed.)

Rob

[keithjfuller]

I think you'll really like this.

Here is the main site: http://deutsch.ucsd.edu/

and here are some musical illusions: http://philomel.com/musical_illusions/

[sammy24]

So if u know you have a lot of fans who are lefties, u might wanna consider making a special "lefty" mix, to cater to their differing perceptions in music.

[sammy24]

k, that post came out looking way too serious. It needed a :D.

[Aziraphal]

Never noticed a left/right difference but this reminds me of another (most certainly harmful) experiment.

I was in a bell tower when a 6-foot bell started doing what bells do best. I had to stick fingers in my ears at once, of course. Then I noticed that if I remove only one finger and keep the other ear plugged, I could listen to the bell at point-blank range with no discomfort. If I removed both, it would start to hurt at once.

(Yes, I was rewarded for that experiment by a ringing in my ears that lasted for a week. Don't try this at home, kids)

[rwayland]

Well, I have a slightly higher sensitivity in the left ear. I rarely drive with my window down, can't blame that. Some slight exposure to disco music in the early seventies, which could be considered similar to sacrificing a queen to gain a a checkmate. But the problem existed before that. I have always considered it related to being struck on the weaker ear by a baseball when I was six. But lately, I thought about the great difference in my eyes. The right eye requires a very large correction, the left merely a large correction. The relationship has been the same all my life. It may be relevant that there is a difference of more than an inch between my left and right sides. In any case, it presents no problems to my hearing, which is still quite good.

When I was younger, I heard the sound of the horizontal oscillator in a TV, which was painful.

But I have heard of persons who hear sounds at different pitches in the ears, sometimes a half tone or more difference.

Richard

[BenNichols]

I think you'll really like this.

Here is the main site: http://deutsch.ucsd.edu/

and here are some musical illusions: http://philomel.com/musical_illusions/


Wow, thats cool stuff, but...err...half of them dont work on me! The octave, scale and chromatic scales all sound as they should (as written)... Perhaps cos Im a lefty. It does say that leftys hear it in a wider variety of ways.

Im pretty certain that my right ear is a teeny bit more sensitive than my left, only because in my music things always tend to be coming slightly more from the right channel, even when panned dead centre in mono. I should really get them tested sometime...:hp:

[ejr]

It's funny. I was just thinking about this myself, since I suffered a hearing loss affecting two frequencies in my right ear. I am editing a film that I made in college. I recently had trasferred to video and I'm digitally re-recording the narration and most of the music. Since some of the sound is irreplacable and mixed for mono, I decided the safest thing to do was to do the final mix as mono.

This got me thinking about my music. Can I trust my own ears when the final mix down is stereo? Am I unconsciously boosting the frequencies that I can't hear well in my right ear and making it sound unnatural to those with no hearing loss?

I also have an extremely high sensitivity to high pitched sounds. (For example, I can hear dog whistles). I'm wondering if I am subconsciously rolling them off (if the overtones annoy me - like a small triangle tremelo) or using them too much, if I find them pleasing (like a high piccolo or violin line).

It's an odd feeling. I am an actor by profession. I also worked as a film editor for a while. I trust my sense of timing and pacing. I have less confidence in my sense of pitch and frequency. In the old analog days, you just rolled off the top in most cases anyway because there was always some tape hiss and that took out some of the highs. But with digital its a little trickier.

I'm wondering if there is a safe range to use as a guide. You know, like there are safe areas marked on video editing monitors to show where the image can get cut off and rounded by old analog TVs, or the video assist monitor in films where you can see the correct aspect ratio?

[DarwinKopp]

ejr,

It can be very unnerving not being able to trust one's senses. I believe a reasonable approach would be to listen to a variety of known commercial mixes similar to your own audio project, some old, some new, in order to get a feel for how your hearing and equipment interact. Then try to match your mix efforts such that you achieve similar results, not too much in variance with what you've been listening to.

You might also check your mix against a spectrum analyzer that shows the energy in various frequency bands to ensure that there aren't any weird, persistent spikes where there shouldn't be any.

[Pingu]

But I have heard of persons who hear sounds at different pitches in the ears, sometimes a half tone or more difference.


Now that's interesting. There are all kinds of questions that would make great research if I could find such people. Do they still form a single pitch when a sound is presented to both ears? Which ear's pitch is more dominant?

And the question of how it's possible to end up hearing differently with both ears in the first place, since sound is such a 'learned' thing. The ears almost always produce quite large variations in electrical activity on hearing a sound - they're meant to, and we gradually learn how to interpret the differences as cues about placement, reverb, movement etc. For this reason, you'd have thought that, even if someone's basilar membranes had completely different levels of elasticity, their brains would gradually learn to expect different information from them, and 'correct' pitch perception.

I'm going to have to go do some research now. Thanks Richard.

[sunbird]

Well, what do you know... ~|

Here's something for piano players (or those who want to be)
who are left-handed:

http://www.lefthandedpiano.co.uk/about.html

;)

[ejr]

Supposedly all the mixes that the Beatles participated in or approved were mono, too. The control room guys did the stereo mixes on their own. Stereo really didn't take over until 1969.

(Note the above comes from absolutely the best book about the fab four I've ever read, "The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions". The author listened to literally every bit of tape of the group that remains in the Apple/EMI archives, and analyzed all the session logs. He was able to trace, to the degree that it is known, which Beatle or session musician did what on every recording, which takes were used, how they were overdubbed. Amazing. Especially considering what they had to work with in those days. You really get a sense of what it was like for them to work in the studio.)

[ejr]

Yeah, the Lewisohn book, that's the one. I go back to it all the time. He actually tells you what tape speeds were used on which vocals, how the EMI engineers invented the flanger, etc. A lot of inside stuff that you can't find anywhere else.

[BenNichols]

Well, what do you know... ~|

Here's something for piano players (or those who want to be)
who are left-handed:

http://www.lefthandedpiano.co.uk/about.html

;)

Thats pretty cool, though as an already trained piano-player who is lefty I doubt that I would be able to cope with that. My right hand is more agile than my left simply cos it is trained to be. However my Left is much more agile than most which gives me a great advantage when it comes to poly-time signatures or boogie-woogie bass lines!

[holderofthehorns]

If you distrust your ears (left/right) simply turn around. I do this frequently. Also move your head laterally from speaker to speaker while mixing. You would be suprized at the different things you will hear.

Occaisionally, I will leave the chair and walk to the back of the room, or even into another room to listen, simulating mono as a "room composite" of the stereo.

All this, with a pretty flat room and quality monitors.

[sunbird]

If you distrust your ears (left/right) simply turn around... Occaisionally, I will leave the chair and walk to the back of the room, or even into another room to listen...

I've been doing the same for some time now... and one can really hear different things that escape one's hearing at the usual location... ;)

[BenNichols]

I cant do that really. I only have near-field monitors :(

[ejr]

Simply turning around in your seat is a great idea. So staggeringly simple that I didn't think of it. Many thanks.

A few more musings . . .

Regarding L & R hand piano parts. As a keyboard player, I do tend to expect to hear the high notes and low notes reversed when I am listening to a piece, if the piano is facing me. When I record a piano part, it sounds normal to me when the high notes are coming out of the right speaker and the lower notes are coming out of the left. But, oddly enough, when I play it back and listen to what I recorded, it sounds "wrong" if I don't reverse the channels. Fortunately, I use NI Akoustic piano, which makes this very easy to do. Another user pointed out that NI Kontakt also has an Invert effect to reverse the channels on other keyboard instruments (harpsichord, organ, etc.) but I have found that it doesn't always work. Perhaps something about the particular samples is effecting this.

One more question, since we are on this rather unique subject. I use a pair of Genelec 1029A studio monitors and a 7050A subwoofer. When I am recording and mixing, I get a balance which sounds about right to me. The piece I am working on does not have a contemporary flavor, so I am not using any electronic sounding isntruments and don't want a big fat booming bass all the time. A string bass and cello in this relatively small ensemble (17 musicians) sounds about right to me. (Supplimented by the bass piano part, low reeds or brass, and timpani on occasion.)

When I mix down to a CD, it sounds fine if I play it back on my DAW, through the same speakers. But if I play it through my AV system I get way too much bass. That system consists of a pair of Genelec 6020A speakers (their "home theater" version of the 1029A) but with no subwoofer, because I simply don't have the room for it. Since I edit video as well, I use my high end DVD player/recorder for playback, through my LCD video monitor -- which is the setup Genelec advised.

For those unfamiliar with Genelec, these are active speakers. Each speaker enclosure contains a woofer, a tweeter, and a separate amp for each. The 1029A speakers are near field monitors. The home theater versions are designed for a listening distance of about 10 feet -- which is about where I have them. If you have the money and the space, you can hook about 5 of them up to their home theater subwoofer for surround sound - but I've never really been into that sort of thing. I'm old enough to remember "quadraphonic" sound and at last count I still had only two ears.

Be that as it may, it seems to me that the obvious problem is that I don't have a subwoofer on my playback system. But I'm a bit puzzled as to why I would hear MORE bass rather than LESS. I would expect the opposite. But I'm not an expert on acoustics, by any means, so I really don't know. I think I can safely assume that the people who listen to the CD demos I am making are probably going to be listening to them on much less sophisticated systems than my DAW. Propsective singers, producers, etc. may be listening in their offices, in their cars, or on portable CD players, which I am sure will roll off the bass a lot. So I've been testing my mixes on my car stereo. There it sounds like the bass is barely enough. Just about right most of the time, but probably needing a little punching up in some places. But, having played back the same test mix on my AV system and hearing way more bass than anywhere else, I'm beginning to wonder which version to trust.

So I guess what I really want to know is if my subwoofer is doing its job. If I turn the speaker volumes to zero, it cuts off all sound to the subwoofer. How do I test it to see if sound is actually coming out of it? Assuming it is, how do I know if it's the right level? Should I just disconnect it and try to mix without it?

As a side note, getting back to the Beatles book I mentioned earlier, there was an incident when they were mixing one of the singles and one of the Beatles was arguing with an engineer about whether the mix would be all right outside of the studio. The tech guy went to his car, got out a cheap, portable record player and played the test pressing on it, to prove that it was okay. But, if you read the book closely, you'll see that what they were doing most of the time is compressing, compressing, compressing -- squashing everything into the middle range. I think this was okay for the style at the time, and because that's what people are used to listening to. But I wonder about audiences today. Aren't we all used to a wider dynamic range and sounds that flirt with the upper and lower extremes of our hearing range now and then?

[holderofthehorns]

Ethan Winer specializes in the bass reproduction area.
He has a lot of education available on his website here:
http://www.realtraps.com/

and a bass test cd here:
http://www.realtraps.com/test-cd.htm

Whether you buy his products or not, his tutorial videos are invaluable to anyone who records and mixes.

Let me encourage you to watch his videos and then run the test cd on your room. You will probably be astonished at the results. Certainly, you will be able to calculate, not guess, better bass response in your mixes.

On a side note, Ethan is a very accomplished Cellist.

[ejr]

The first time I appeared on Saturday Night Live, Neil Young was the musical guest. He refused to rehearse. Wouldn't even do a sound check. Everybody at the network hated him. The first time they heard his set is when he did it live, on the air. He ran over time and they had to bump the last sketch. They got even, though. When they edited the show for re-runs and syndication, they cut Young and put the sketch back in - so he doesn't get any resdiduals from it.

[Haydn]

If you liked Mark Lewisohn's book on the Beatles, then you need to pickup Geoff Emericks book - Here, There and Everywhere. His book goes a little more behind the scenes on what happened in the sessions he engineered.

Jim