Bark scale
Encyclopedia
The Bark scale is a psychoacoustical
Psychoacoustics
Psychoacoustics is the scientific study of sound perception. More specifically, it is the branch of science studying the psychological and physiological responses associated with sound...

 scale proposed by Eberhard Zwicker in 1961. It is named after Heinrich Barkhausen
Heinrich Barkhausen
Heinrich Georg Barkhausen , born at Bremen, was a German physicist.Born into a patrician family in Bremen, he showed interest in natural sciences from an early age...

 who proposed the first subjective measurements of loudness.

The scale ranges from 1 to 24 and corresponds to the first 24 critical bands
Critical bands
The term critical band, introduced by Harvey Fletcher in the 1940s, referred to the frequency bandwidth of the then loosely defined auditory filter....

 of hearing
Hearing (sense)
Hearing is the ability to perceive sound by detecting vibrations through an organ such as the ear. It is one of the traditional five senses...

. The subsequent band edges are (in Hz
Hertz
The hertz is the SI unit of frequency defined as the number of cycles per second of a periodic phenomenon. One of its most common uses is the description of the sine wave, particularly those used in radio and audio applications....

) 20, 100, 200, 300, 400, 510, 630, 770, 920, 1080, 1270, 1480, 1720, 2000, 2320, 2700, 3150, 3700, 4400, 5300, 6400, 7700, 9500, 12000, 15500; the centers are 50, 150, 250, 350, 450, 570, 700, 840, 1000, 1170, 1370, 1600, 1850, 2150, 2500, 2900, 3400, 4000, 4800, 5800, 7000, 8500, 10500, 13500.

It is related to, but somewhat less popular than the mel scale
Mel scale
The mel scale, named by Stevens, Volkman and Newman in 1937is a perceptual scale of pitches judged by listeners to be equal in distance from one another. The reference point between this scale and normal frequency measurement is defined by assigning a perceptual pitch of 1000 mels to a 1000 Hz...

.

To convert a frequency f (Hz) into Bark use:

or (traunmuller 1990)

if result < 2 add 0.15*(2-result)

if result > 20.1 add 0.22*(result-20.1) with z in bark.

OR
f = 600*sinh(z/6)

See also

  • Luminosity function
    Luminosity function
    The luminosity function or luminous efficiency function describes the average visual sensitivity of the human eye to light of different wavelengths. It should not be considered perfectly accurate in every case, but it is a very good representation of visual sensitivity of the human eye and it is...

    , which describes the average sensitivity of the human eye to light of different wavelengths.
  • Fletcher–Munson curves
    Fletcher–Munson curves
    The Fletcher–Munson curves are one of many sets of equal-loudness contours for the human ear, determined experimentally by Harvey Fletcher and Wilden A...


External links

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