Tom Young wrote on Thu, 24 March 2005 08:49 |
Sure.
We are talking two completely different animals here.
Masking is not cancelling.
Masking works by introducing random noise which defocuses the ear-brain from hearing what we don't want folks to hear. Typically this is outside of a doctor's or therapist's office where the private conversations would be heard by folks in the waiting room or another office. When we introduce white or pink noise (random noise) at a loud enough level (doeasn't need to be very loud at all, actually) the folks who are exposed to the noise do not hear the conversations, or at least cannot hear them well enough to understand them.
There is lots going on here. If it was music we were trying to make "not audible", random noise would not work because music has a rhythmic and repetitve character that we can discern through the noise masking energy. But in order for us to understand conversation, we need lots of aural cues which are masked by random noise, in this case, and which are also masked by long/late reflections or too-long & loud reverberance in the case of a space with poor acoustics and therefore low intelligibility. Note that you will still faintly detect that human voices are speaking with a noise-masking system or in a low-intelligibility aural experience. But you will not understand most or all of the words being spoken. This effect is not effected by listener's position because there is no arrival tme relationship between the effect of the random noise and your ears.
Understand why this is not akin to noise cancelling ?
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So basically the masking greatly increases the %Alcons? The higher the %ALCONS the harder it is to make out words right? Human hearing depends on consonants to derive and understand speech... I wonder if there is a way to "dial in" the % alcons?? Am I being too simplistic?