The hearing system performs far richer acoustic analysis than a spectrogram captures.

Evidence

This provides just a hint at the real acoustic analysis task facing the hearing system when listening to music and that the spectrogram cannot be the full picture provided to the brain for the perception of sound. — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 1466

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A large claim about the limits of visual sound analysis versus biological hearing — worth sitting with when thinking about what listening actually is.
• SEED: Essay angle: ‘What the spectrogram can’t see’ — why visualizing sound misleads us about what the ear and brain do.
• XREF: connects to: The hearing system actively filters and modulates sound more than passively receiving it — George Michelsen Foy, Zero Decibels: The Quest for Absolute…, 558

Broader Connections

• The hearing system actively filters and modulates sound more than passively receiving it #corroborates (1.00) — George Michelsen Foy, Zero Decibels, 558