When I worked for Eastman Kodak Company, I learned that the human eye distinguishes between just 33 shades of gray for any area of a photograph. Similarly, in the audio world although trained ears can distinguish a one decibel interval, an average listener distinguishes 3-decibel jumps. Within a 90 db signal-to-noise ratio, there are roughly 30 of those.

I'm wondering whether eyes and ears might have an approximate matching of distinguishable levels between black/white and loud sound/no sound dichotomies. If so, perhaps the binary 2^5 or 32 might be enough to approximate these "gray areas."

If anyone knows of any research in this area, I would like to hear about it.

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