Received 03/15/2006 11:25
Science for your ears!
And now a word from our very own Dr. Wayne Wilkinson:
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So I'm still reading all kinds of great stuff about sound, and
audiophile-dom, and I was thinking: what would the ideal method of sound
reproduction be? Obviously you'd like to have all barriers between you
and the performance or studio composition removed, so that ultimately if
you closed your eyes you wouldn't be able to tell if it were live or
not. Real or Memorex, right?
But there's something even BETTER.
Suppose you could bypass ear mechanics and induce signals in the
auditory nerves directly. You'd want to either totally block out
ambient sound, or even temporarily disable the ears, so that nothing
"real" could get in while you were listening to your music. Surgery may
need to be involved, but it'd be worth it. Plus, you'd have the side
benefit of being able to turn off your hearing at will. How'd that be
for sleeping on the airplane?
So, getting back to music, you wouldn't be recording the sounds directly
anymore. The methodology would totally change, and formats and
materials would all be made irrelevant. What you'd be recording is the
nerve data that appears downstream of the cochlea which then makes its
way into the auditory cortex. How'd that be?
There's more. You'd be "recording" using someone else's ears! And
they'd probably be a lot better than yours. I know I've got a bit of
tinnitus -- to experience totally clean sound would be wonderful. So in
addition to having different recordings of live performances in
different venues or studio sessions, you'd hear performances THROUGH
other people's heads. They'd have professional listeners. You'd
probably want to use kids, actually, provided you could get their
parents to agree to sticking whatever it is we'll be sticking in their
little heads. And they'd have to sit still and not turn their heads
even a little bit. Yeah, you'd have to render them unconscious now that
I think about it. And strap their heads into some vice-like gizmo so it
can't move. Parents will have a hard time with all this, but I'm sure
some hard-core audiophiles would do that to their kids. We don't have
to use kids, of course. But it's an idea.
And here's another thing (no, I ain't done with you yet!): I wonder what
the frequency resolving power of the auditory cortex is? I'll bet it's
above 20KHz. Maybe a lot higher. Some sea mammals can hear up to
around 200KHz. Music, itself, might change. There'd be all kinds of
funky new instruments to generate pleasing tones in those higher
frequencies. I wonder what they'd look like?
Dr. Wayne Wilkinson
Hypno-Chemist
text and concepts ©Wayne Wilkinson
