WEEK 6

PRE-CLASS ACTIVITIES

Ears don't lie: Virtual haircut.

The setting of this video is that of a barber shop. This video is an audio simulation, very similar to ASMR, showing off some psychoacoustics as well as some localisation.

There are two microphones on either side to capture the complete stereo image but they both are working to tell your brain where source of the sound is. This is how the sounds are being perceived by the brain. My conclusion is that the they are using one of those microphones with the ears around them, like the ones specifically made for ASMR.

Quiz tones

My score was 650. That's definitely not as good as it should be, but I feel this is mainly to me not understanding how the program worked for the first half. Also, I did second guess myself with some of the tone questions.

IN-CLASS SUMMARY

Week 6 marked the halfway point for the AUD 175. So far, this was probably the most mind bending of the sessions we have had so far just due to sheer scope of the mathematics of the topics that were covered. Measurements of sound (decibels), logarithms, psychoacoustics and, localisation were the topics that were covered during this session.

Sam advised that he had to cover logarithms and that it did contain some mathematics so he was forgiving when most of the class was not completely on bored. Logarithms allow us to represent and measure very large or small numbers in a scale we understand. Logarithms use times factors to represent how many times you putting a number into itself as a measurement. For example measuring in log10 is 1 times, if we are measuring things with log100 we know it's 2 times and, when we are measuring things in log1000 we know it's 3 times. If you were measuring things in log5 it would 0.5 times. This applies to whatever the breakdown is.

It sounds very confusing and personally, I found the logarithms to be very confusing and although in my head I was able to work out some of the equations I wasn't able to explain this back to Sam. He did say that logarithms and dBV may come up when calibrating speakers or a console. Moving onto the decibel, the decibel full scale (dBFS) is the maximum amount gain before clipping and distortion occurs. A decibel is 1 tenth of a bell so 2 bells would be 20 decibels. Things started to get a little more confusing from this point (talking about watts, voltages, the physics and decibel levels) on until we got psychoacoustics.

Finally we got onto how we perceive sound through psychoacoustics. As the measuring of sound and physics behind the sound are objective, how we perceive sound is subjective. The way our bodies are shaped and individually made all effect the way we perceive sound, even our mental state. For instance, if you are mixing and you are in a happy mood or stressed mood that can affect your mix. So it is beneficial as an engineer to get up and walk away from your mix every now and again.

Sam talked about phantom words, McGurk effect, the cocktail party effect, binaural beats and, frequency masking. These are all psychoacoustics. Sam showed us an example of each which was pretty interesting. After we moved onto localisation and how the ear perceives sounds through localisation. It was pretty neat to see that you can trick the ear into hearing something on either the left or right side of your ears.

POST-CLASS REFLECTION

My brain was very much in a fried state after experiencing what we had covered. Even though I did eventually understand the what was going on with logarithms, when it came to understanding the measurements, science and physics behind the sound I was quite lost. This is something I will need to do more research in this weeks notes and or ask Sam to elaborate on, as I am still completely lost as I am reflecting back on this session.

The psychoacoustic part of this session was a lot easier for me to follow and I definitely was more switched on during that later part of the session. That being said, it still wouldn't hurt to do some extra research regarding the terms that were touched upon during the psychoacoustic session. This all feeds into the transferrable skill practice because if I can earn what was taught today, I'll have another layer applied to my knowledge of sound.

Extra research on many of the topics covered because of how complex they are.
Link up with my group partner and start collecting the data for the upcoming project.

As I said before, I'll need to research these terms and immerse myself within this language as there may be situations where I need this information. It would be beneficial if I were to ask Sam the following,

Clarify logarithms.
What is the meaning of dBV and how does decibels relate to voltage?
dBFS, dBU?

Sam mentioned that the mastering engineer's handbook is a great source of information so it may be wise of me to hire that out and have a read if I have the spare time. Moving forward, I am not too sure who my group partner is for the upcoming project but I need to start collating data and our recordings for the upcoming project as I do not want to fall behind.

TRANSFERRABLE SKILL: INTRAPERSONAL

How does failure fit into the creative process? - What do you think can be learnt from not succeeding on the first (or second) attempt?

Without failure you cannot grow and learn from them. It’s not a matter of if you fail but more a matter of how do you learn from it? Failure is something everybody must face sooner or later in life. Doing anything creative mostly poses risks of failure. The project may not have been how you imagined it, you may not have been able to translate what was in your head into your creative medium or maybe it may not have been received the way you thought it would. Whatever the case may be failure is part of the creative process but, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. The lessons I think can be learnt from failure are:

Having a new perspective to your work: When a failure occurs, it forces you to look inward. It’s something I tend to do myself if I fail. It usually does put me down a little but it compels me to look at my work critically from another angle which in turn usually reveals flaws I never encountered or gives me new insights that can elevate my work.

Learning from that failure: This mostly ties in with the afore mentioned concept, but usually when you make a mistake/failure you hopefully won’t repeat it as you would have learnt from it. When reflecting upon your failure, I find having a checklist of the mistakes and constructive feedback/critiques you may have got can help you not repeat them for future creative endeavors.

Growing and evolving yourself: I think I can rightly say that this applies to all walks of life not just creative processes and projects. Failing ultimately builds your resilience which ultimately builds your character. If you never failed at something you wouldn’t learn many integral skills such as: critical thinking, creative problem solving and self-reflection. No one likes to fail, but I find every time I do, I am gifted with lessons that help strengthen my character and creative process.

Although I have explained my interpretation of why failure fits into the creative process, there are other point of views that are equally valid. We shouldn’t be afraid of failure; it is important in pretty much everything we do. It wasn’t that long ago that I was afraid to fail which in turn stopped me from even trying to do what it was that I wanted to do creatively. I still struggle with it; it crippled me for a lot of years, but I am slowly starting to unlearn this because being afraid of failure is the biggest failure in life.

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