Effects of ear training on education on sound quality of digital audio for non-technical undergraduates

摘要

This paper demonstrates the effectiveness of ear training in lectures on audio processing conducted over the 2013 and 2014 academic terms. Student understanding of the lecture content was assessed by comparing scores of written tests that covered the sound quality of perceptual audio codecs and other topics, which were administered after lectures with and without ear training on identifying bitrates of sound files. The same approach was applied to a lecture on audio digitizing and ear training on identifying sampling frequencies. The test scores of assessments that focused on the sound quality of perceptual audio codecs were significantly higher among students who had participated in ear training compared to those who had not participated in such training. In contrast, no significant difference was found in the group scores of participants tested after ear training on identifying sampling frequency. The effectiveness of ear training being limited to perceptual codings was investigated in terms of prior knowledge of the technical terms.