"Tommi" wrote in message

wrote in message
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Justin Ulysses Morse wrote:

While it's true that the additional bits tack your extended
resolution onto "the bottom" of the dynamic range, it clearly
increases the resolution at all levels. You can have a -100dB
component to a -1dB signal, and you still want to hear it.

Is the ear even capable of hearing the -100 component against the
much louder -1? I thought masking pervented this.

Masking, it is frequency-dependent. However, this leads to thinking
about the fact that the human ear actually compresses dynamics at
higher sound pressures. My understanding is that we have roughly
80dB's worth of dynamic range at a time, which we then move according
to the sound pressure levels of the sound sources.

Probably less than 80 dB, more like 60 or 70 dB. The actual number depends
on the kinds of sounds you use to establish the 0 dB point. There's a big
difference in what happens if you set the 0 level with a sustained tone like
that from a piano, or a percussive tone, like that from a castanet or
triangle.

For example, if you'd be listening something at 110dB SPL for 5
minutes, after that you couldn't hear the same sound with 2dB SPL for
a while.

Yes, at sustained levels of 110 dB most people would experience quite a bit
of threshold shift.

It works the other way round too: If you're listening
something at 5dB spl for a while, and then suddenly the same sound
source produces a 120dB spl sound, your ear would compress it
lower(by stretching the eardrum, moving the hammer away from it etc)
in order to protect your hearing mechanism. This, however isn't true
with very short peaks because your protection mechanism takes some
time to wake up.

Agreed.