[time-nuts] Visual clock comparison

[Chris Albertson]

If you use ticks in you experiment you will need to use headphones
otherwise room acoustics does into play.  With speakers you hear the
tick ad also the reflection of the tick off the walls.  Your close
ticks will be on the same order as the delay due to reflections.  The
effect is 100% real ad you can hear the difference between a tick
played over speakers in a small or large room.  The echo are a few
milliseconds out of phase and add constructively or not based on
wavelength.  So use headphones

If you have any audio recording/editing software it is easy to make a
track of clicks then a second copy of that and add a delay.  This a so
common in the recording industry they call them "click tracks".
Musicians will listen to them in headphones.  If they keep time with
the click track then the recording engineer will be able to cut an
past "takes" made days apart by different musicians

On Fri, Apr 17, 2015 at 10:11 PM, Tom Van Baak <tvb at leapsecond.com> wrote:
> That would make a fun time experiment. One that you should do and report back to us.
> I see two experiments: one using LED flashes and one using speaker ticks.
> In each case output a main and a delayed pulse. Try it yourself, and with a number of friends.
> The goal is to find at what level people can discern the difference between, or the order of, two events.
> From the data you can determine both a human average and an average human response.
>
> Use identical LEDs, and identical speakers.
> Also, use a common timing source. Do not compare CHU with NTP with PC monitor with PC speakers; all that does is introduce layers of unknown offsets into your experiment. This is would be an easy Arduino / Raspberry-Pi sort of project.
> For higher precision, see pd26.asm and pd27.asm ( http://leapsecond.com/pic/src/ ) as an example of precise pulse stepping.
>
> If this turns out to give reliable data, you can then try different color LEDs and different frequency speaker ticks to see what effect that might have on resolution. Also try different pulse durations to see if human leading edge detection is affected by pulse width.
>
> For those of you with a Stanford Research DG535 and two spare LEDs, give it a try right now.
> http://www.thinksrs.com/products/DG535.htm
>
> /tvb
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "d0ct0r" <time at patoka.org>
> To: "Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement" <time-nuts at febo.com>
> Sent: Friday, April 17, 2015 11:16 AM
> Subject: [time-nuts] Visual clock comparison
>
>
>>
>> Hello, Netizens !
>>
>> I am wandering what is the average human ability to visually compare two
>> clocks ? Let say I have XClock application running on one machine
>> (stratum 1 NTP) and I have my project clock close by. And I would like
>> to match the reading. If I'll see the difference, which range it will be
>> ? 100ms or so ?
>> I also tried to use my ears (CHU radio signals and clock display, NRC
>> phone line). However NRC "Talking Clock" could be routed via Satelite
>> which will compromise the "reading" a little bit. Thanks !
>>
>> --
>> WBW,
>>
>> V.P.
>
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-- 

Chris Albertson
Redondo Beach, California