[sdiy] Random DSP thoughts

[Veronica Merryfield]

On 29-Jan-09, at 2:01 AM, Tim Ressel wrote:

> I've heard it said a blind man can go into a new room, clap his  
> hands, and instantly know where the walls, doors, and obstacles are.

When I worked for BBC radio in Southampton, one of the presenters was  
blind. He was well known on national BBC radio with the program In  
Touch - David Scott Blackhall. I was amazed how he could navigate  
round moving groups of people in rooms and corridors. One day I sat  
with him for lunch and asked him how he did it and he told me how he  
could hear all the detail of a room and that it was almost impossible  
to fool him as he could hear the merest detail. Being up for a  
challenge and him being a creature of habit I did one day manage to be  
in a corridor as he was due the other way. He walked down the corridor  
coming right up to me and stopped right in front of me and said he  
could hear the echos of his footstep bouncing off me and figured it  
was me. One of my older colleagues happened to see all this  and  
smiling said I would have to find a noiseless anechoic material to  
wear to see if he could hear holes as well as echos. I didn't bother :)

He did go on to teach me how to listen albeit a fraction of what he  
could do but was very helpful for working in studios, and as I found  
last week, hearing dripping water across an active engineering works -  
don't ask, I have no idea how.

To David.

Veronica