# What is faster:The eyes or the ears?



## Christof (Jun 12, 2018)

When it comes to certain hit points like sudden cuts, explosions or surprises I always ask myself during scoring a scene if my music should come slightly before, slightly after or exactly on the hit point....
Actually I prefer slightly (a few frames only) before it happens because I have the feeling that the human brain is a bit faster when it comes so visual cognition, the ears need a bit longer because the sound needs a certain amount of time to travel from the speakers to the listener.
Am I wrong or right?
I am talking about subconscious cognitions of course.


----------



## Vardaro (Jun 12, 2018)

Sound travels a million times slower than light, so it depends how far away the explosion is seen.


----------



## Christof (Jun 12, 2018)

Vardaro said:


> Sound travels a million times slower than light, so it depends how far away the explosion is seen.


Yes, but I don't mean explosions only, it can be anything, sometimes just an eye blink...


----------



## Vardaro (Jun 12, 2018)

That would depend on whether the sound represents what caused the blink (even if imaginary), or rather the blink's effect on someone (or us).


----------



## theiss1979 (Jun 12, 2018)

If we are talking about a short distance within a room, the difference is almost non-existent. The speed of your nerve impulses (the speed the information e.g. light or sound, after it reaches the nerve cells within your eye or ear, get's translated into an electrical signal, and has to reach the brain to be interpreted) take about 100 m/s - which is a third of the speed of sound.


----------



## chrisr (Jun 12, 2018)

Honestly I just go by feel and do different things each time. If it's in even vaguely the right place then generally that's great and I'll move on. It's nice to stay out of the way of sfx anyway.

Regarding perception/cognition; I think they're slippery beasts, so for that reason I don't give it too much thought. In the same way that we've all fooled ourselves that we've applied EQ only to find out that we haven't - I think many people might also be fooled into feeling identical playbacks differently on repeated viewings just by the power of suggestion that something has been moved. We're often pretty insensitive to these things I find.


----------



## d.healey (Jun 12, 2018)

Put it slightly after the hit. If you put it before your anticipating it (giving it away) if you put it after you're punctuating it. Generally don't put it on the hit because it will be lost in the sound effects.


----------



## Thomas A Booker (Jun 12, 2018)

Christof said:


> Actually I prefer slightly (a few frames only) before it happens because I have the feeling that the human brain is a bit faster when it comes so visual cognition, the ears need a bit longer because the sound needs a certain amount of time to travel from the speakers to the listener.



You have to be a bit careful about distinguishing between several factors:
(1) how long it takes the sound/light to reach the listener/viewer,
(2) how long it takes to convert the sound/light into electrical impulses and transmit it to the relevant parts of the brain
(3) how long it takes the brain to process the information it has been sent so that a person can consciously register that something has happened.

As theiss says, (1) is really not a factor because (2) and (3) take so much longer for both sound and light.

The time it takes for a few frames to complete is also much longer than the time it takes for sound to travel a few meters. But it probably doesn't make sense to try to compensate for that kind of thing anyway: if you think about what happens when someone actually sees an explosion in real life, the sound *will* reach them slightly after the light does. (Unless they're so close to it that it's the last thing they'll ever get to see or hear anyway!)

As for whether the ears or eyes are faster (i.e. how long does (2) plus (3) take for light vs sound), I believe the ears are significantly faster:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4456887/
https://blog.medel.com/the-speed-of-hearing/

Despite all that, it's probably best to just experiment and see what "feels" best, but I would imagine putting it exactly on time or slightly after would work better.


----------



## Living Fossil (Jun 12, 2018)

Christof said:


> ...because I have the feeling that the human brain is a bit faster when it comes so visual cognition, ...



The ear is much faster of course.
24 notes per second is not even very fast for your ear, while 24 images per second is a common frate rate.


----------



## JEPA (Jun 12, 2018)

If you're talking about image-sound syncing make an experiment :
De-sync Lip-syncing to the point is noticeable. Go back to unnoticeable point. That's your hit point. ..


----------



## munician (Jun 12, 2018)

In film scoring we learned, if I correctly remember the early eighties, to sync the cut or hit with music no more than 3 frames late and never too early.
In my own experience I almost always found it awkward to hit the exact frame, probably because the ear works faster than the eye which takes a moment to decipher what it sees.
Too early to me is almost always bad, but that depends a lot on the scene: with a lot of action it might work better than if you have a slow scene with only one hit point…
The biggest problem for me is that I start to lose the sense for that after I’ve watched that scene for the hundredth time…that’s the moment to get a second opinion.


----------



## chrisr (Jun 12, 2018)

munician said:


> The biggest problem for me is that I start to lose the sense for that after I’ve watched that scene for the hundredth time…



In that scenario I say if it's not obviously "wrong" then it's one of the many possible "rights" & time to move on.


----------



## munician (Jun 12, 2018)

"In that scenario I say if it's not obviously "wrong" then it's one of the many possible "rights" & time to move on"

I hear you, but since there is no second time for first impressions in film scoring it is a problem for me to loose that first impression feeling after I know the scene inside and out...


----------

