Dr. Jennifer Groh

But in addition, there's a copy that's bouncing off of the table that's between us.

That has a longer path length, so it'll be slightly delayed.

There'll be another copy that's, you know, hitting the ceiling and coming down to my ears.

And that is going to have an even longer delay.

I'm completely unaware of this, but my brain is probably using the slight differences and the kind of pattern of slight differences to figure out, you know, that you're about seven feet away from me.

If we were closer to each other, the difference between that straight path copy and the copy bouncing off of the table would be greater than it is right now because at this angle with this geometry, there's really not that much difference.

So the bounced off copy and the straight path copy are pretty similar.

It's incredible, right?

Yeah.

We're in a hall of mirrors for sound all the time.

And I don't hear you as saying the same thing, you know, five different times, right?

You know, it's one integrated whole.

Right.

It's wild, isn't it?

Maybe we are like the elephants.

I don't know.

So there's a few things wrapped up here.

One is that the lower frequencies bend more, bend more easily, so they can go around these objects better.

So if you're talking really long distances, you know, the odds that there's something in the path that you want the sound to go around or go up.

Another thing that's wrapped up here is that we tend to lose high frequency hearing before we lose low frequency hearing.