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| The human Ear |
When it comes to sound design and
audio we really don’t think much of how we actually hear things and why, I
thought it would be an interesting post to describe the inner workings of the
human ear and describe how each part works and how it relates to some part of
audio in the real world.
Lets begin first by describing the outer ear, this is the fleshy part of
the ear with all the curves and bends. It is portrayed on the far left of the
ear photo ( it isn’t labeled). The Pinna acts like a dish, it helps localize
sounds, which is why your ear has all those curves. Sound bounces off the ear
and is reflected into the ear canal.
The ear canal serves to boost frequencies from around 2 to 5k, which
comes the theory of why babies cry at this range so the mother can hear them
better, a reason why the human race has lived for so many years so far. The
other reason for the ear canal is to protect the eardrum.
The Ear drum or the tympanic membrane acts just like a diaphragm on a
microphone would. Sound entering the ear canal hits the ear drum creating it to
vibrate back and forth which then flows in the middle ear bones.
The middle ear bones include the malleus, which is directly connected to
the ear drum, the incus and the stapes which is attached to the oval window. These
bones act as a impedance matcher because the cochlea (the next stage of the
ear) is filled with fluid and sound entering is based in an air medium the
bones balance the impendence to allow it to go into the cochlea.
Finally the cochlea can be thought of the frequency range that you can
hear, it contains little hairs that have a specific frequency that you can
hear.
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