edhall@rand.org (Ed Hall) (04/10/91)
>>The ear is capable of hearing a range of up to 10 octaves. >>This makes it possible to us to hear all the overtones that enable us >>to distinguish vowels (understand language). Actually, only three and a half of those ten octaves are necessary for most speech sounds; consider that telephony is generally band- limited to 300-3500Hz. (There are certain sibilant sounds which require energy outside of this range to be properly distinguished, but that's not a problem in English, at least.) Also, consider that our ancestors had ears (or something like them) for a couple hundred million years before they had speech. Lucky for us... -Ed Hall edhall@rand.org