>>>For these reasons I am perfectly happy to be off your list.
Is this a request for removal?
I am content to observe you dig yourself in deeper with each post. Of course, you are free to unsubscribe at any time.
However I will not tolerate name calling or personal insult. If you do that again, I will remove you.
David wrote only this:
>>> Please give us your references. Which pages of which books?
A perfectly legitimate question, since you claimed your argument was supported in textbooks. Your response:
>>>, I find this penchant of yours for faux obtuseness boring and obnoxious, and I will not help you bait me into another useless discussion...
And
>>> Seen [sic] you are evidently unable to use the Internet, here are just a few examples that you could easily have found yourself - if you were truly interested in a real discussion...
Is the typical response of someone arguing from an indefensible position who is unwilling to admit to an error--get personally nasty.
YOU made the textbook claim. David isn't obligated to search the internet to prove your (incorrect) point. Frankly, I agree with him--you made the ridiculous claim, and asserted it was backed up by textbooks. If you are called on that, it is up to you to defend your position, and if you were truly able to do so, you would.
It is true that humans are only able to perceive a certain (variable) amount of pitch discrimination. But the argument that both humans and mechanical devices can perceive no difference between pitches of 415 hz and 415.3 hz due to hearing only a partial oscilloscope wave during a 1 second increment is specious and, well, ludicrous. If this were true, pitch sensitive devices would read 415.0 for both pitches, which they don't, even if the sound source is only one second long. (Of course, as many have pointed out, tying an arbitrary duration makes no sense in terms of how the human organs of hearing function.)
Let me point out your error in yet another way. So as not to misrepresent what you wrote, I will quote your original:
>>>Hello Jonathan,
>>>No offense, but I guess in the age of Internet, people scan and don't read
>>>responses through to the end? Makes discussions somewhat problematic....
>>>As I mentioned earlier this morning, the human ear cannot hear fractional
>>>vibrations, period.
>>>It is a physcial impossibility, like a statistical family of 2.3 children,
>>>you either have 2 or 3.
>>>A discrete wavelength must have a full cycle on the tympanum in order to
>>>register pitch in the cochlea.
The first pitch is 415 hz. That is, 415 cycles per second. The other pitch is 415.3 cycles per second. So, the first tone is oscillating 415 times during that second, or once in 1/415th of a second. The other pitch is oscillating at a rate of once in 1/415.3 of a second. If you think this through, you will see that you will BEGIN to perceive the pitch during the first few waves, and you will perceive the correct pitch for the duration of a second, or an hour, or a week, if it persists. For your argument to work, the duration of the tone would have to be only 1/415th of a second in duration for that "partial wave" to cause a problem in pitch discrimination. As soon as a few of the cycles are heard (in other words, a fraction of a second), a machine will perceive the correct pitch, and if ears are sensitive enough to perceive a difference, they will hear it too.
In a practical sense, your argument is irrelevant, because tuning and listening are not done in 1-second bursts of sound, much less 1/415th of a second.
So, where are those textbook sources?
dk
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