What polar pattern are our ears?

C

Captain Whisky

New member
Sup folks? I'm new to the forum ;) though I think I was a member when I was much younger.

I was just curious as to what polar pattern our ears are? I'm guessing that they are omnidirectional right?
 
The basic ear is omni: it's a pressure-gradient sensor. It gets complicated by the fact they're mounted on a (relatively) solid head, with a weirdly-shaped cup structure.
 
sjjohnston said:
The basic ear is omni: it's a pressure-gradient sensor. It gets complicated by the fact they're mounted on a (relatively) solid head, with a weirdly-shaped cup structure.
Click to expand...

Not pressure gradient, just pressure sensitive. A pressure gradient mic would be like a cardioid mic with an opening in the back or sides. The ears don't have an opening in back, it's functionally sealed. (Yeah, I know there is the Eustachian tube, but it goes to the back of the throat.)
 
Yeah, that's what I meant. I may have misused the term "pressure gradient." Basic point is that ears are like a microphone with sealed capsule (omni), and not like a ribbon / velocity sensor (figure 8) or something that combines characteristics of both (cardiod or some variant thereon).
 
Captain Whisky said:
Care to elaborate? ;)
Click to expand...

Each ear, as it is with the eardrum inside the canal with the pinna on the side of the head and the head itself, is directional over most of the audio range but omnidirectional at lower frequencies (like most directional microphones). The head blocks higher frequencies but lower ones wrap around into the ear. On top of that you have the pinna effect that creates a comb filter that varies with the arrival angle of the sound. One ear gives the brain significant ability to detect the direction the sound comes from.

Put two ears together with the brain's processing power and you also get to exploit differences in volumes and arrival times between the two ears, creating a more or less omnidirectional system that can pinpoint the direction of a sound's source and provide a lot of other information about the environment.
 
Dave (famous) was the dinosaur trainer back in the early Triassic period. It wasn't until ProBones was introduced in the early Jurassic period, that moods began to change for the media that the earlier Mesozoic engineers came to love. It was the new hip hop producahsaurs that came in the Cretaceous era, that really skewed the way things were captured. Herbivores started hanging out at Stonebucks drinking coffee instead of fermented veggies. Then, the recording industry was hit by a giant rock that crippled the industry. Some call it a meteor. I think it was a really big Mac daddy Apple. I-Stones took away the money that made the industry possible. Then it was up to the lower order reptiles to inherit the Earth. And there was a monkey in there somewhere.

Then man came into the equation. :facepalm:

Save us FAMOUS DAVE!!!
 
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