{"id":116,"date":"2012-09-25T11:20:00","date_gmt":"2012-09-25T09:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theband.at\/?p=116"},"modified":"2012-09-25T11:22:29","modified_gmt":"2012-09-25T09:22:29","slug":"hearing-in-a-relative-world-perception-bias","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dubidu.io\/?p=116","title":{"rendered":"Hearing in a relative world – perception bias"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been reflecting on the process of hearing, a lot, lately, and most of all about how we hear\u00a0 frequency response. When do we percieve a song or a mix to be flat spectrum, when do we think a song is “phat” and when is it just bass-heavy?<\/p>\n

I think the human brain strives towards presenting perfection to it’s user. We all know, that\u00a0when listening to a strange sounding mix, it can become more agreeable over time, and sometimes the new sound then is our new frame of reference.<\/p>\n

I think we can use that. If I want to make a track “phat”, I actually make it quite light on bass frequencies and then have very few elements that break that rule. For example let’s say I have a piano, some percussion loops and a kick drum and bass. I could make everything quite bass-light, except the kick, and some bass notes.<\/p>\n

The ear adjust its response to the bass-light rest as “normal” and then gets surprised by the onslaught of the heavy kick-drum. Thus percieving the track as “phat”. Although it’s actually not.<\/p>\n

Conversely, if I make too many elements “phat” in listening solo, I now have a bass-heavy track, and the brain “deletes” the extra bass information in presenting the track to me and so I percieve it as wobbly and not-phat.<\/p>\n

I think fascinating mixes are all about building expectations, sonically, dynamically and structurally, and then breaking them in interessting ways.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been reflecting on the process of hearing, a lot, lately, and most of all about how we hear\u00a0 frequency response. When do we percieve a song or a mix to be flat spectrum, when do we think a song is “phat” and when is it just bass-heavy? I think the human brain strives towards […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dubidu.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dubidu.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dubidu.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubidu.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubidu.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=116"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dubidu.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":118,"href":"https:\/\/dubidu.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116\/revisions\/118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dubidu.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubidu.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubidu.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}