Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (
More info?)
Arny Krueger wrote:
> I've noticed the same thing with analog faders. Don't you think that might
> be due to the Fletcher Munson effect?
:
:
> When it comes to human perception, psychoacoustics rules.
Oh, speaking of that, I've been wondering about something for a while,
and I'm curious if maybe someone here has any insight.
Sometimes I find myself hearing music at a level that is quite low.
Not quite down to the level of barely perceptible, but more at the
kind of level where I can hear the music well enough to recognize
parts of it but not well enough to necessarily follow along. For
instance, this happens in my car, where the aftermarket CD unit I
installed has a habit of resetting its volume level to something
way too low whenever I turn off the ignition. It is low enough
that, because of ambient noise, I often don't even notice that it's
playing.
Anyway, if I'm listening at this low level, I get a certain idea of
the pitch, i.e. the key that the song is in. If I then turn the
volume up so that it's normal listening level (or even below normal
listening level but high enough that I can clearly make everything
out), then the pitch seems to increase by something on the order
of 1/2 of a semitone to a full semitone! If I then lower the volume
again, it doesn't seem to go back down in pitch and instead stays
where it was at the higher volume, as if my brain has somehow "locked
on" to the proper pitch once it got a taste of it.
Perhaps coincidentally or perhaps not, I am trying to develop perfect
pitch, and I have a habit of coming in about 1 semitone low or maybe
a little less than that. For instance, I'll hear a song in my head
and start singing it, and I'll be in C#, but then I'll put the CD in
and play it to compare, and the song is actually in D.
So am I a brain-damaged freak or is this a known phenomenon?
- Logan
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