>
there is a fundamental tradeoff between frequency resolution and time resolutionI've always found it interesting that while that's fundamentally true in terms of information, my understanding is that we perceive things with far more resolution than the uncertainty principle would allow. Specifically, we're able to judge frequencies with far more accuracy than a fuzzy spectrogram would suggest.
From what I understand, our brain essentially performs a kind of "deconvolution" on the fuzzy frequency data to identify a far "sharper" and defined frequency, which is relatively straightforward since the frequency "spread" is a known quantity.
This works well most of the time because we correctly assume we're dealing with relatively isolated sound sources emanating a distinct fundamental with a distinct series of overtones.
Our perception can become innacurate when that assumption fails to hold, and so sounds merge or become indistinguishable, we hear beat tones that don't technically exist, our brain gives up trying to hear frequencies and classifies it all as noise, etc.
I've never come across audio spectrogram software that attempted to perform a frequency deconvolution in a way that roughly simulates what our own ears do, but I'd love to know if anyone else has and could point me to it.