It may be fine to think of the ear as doing a Fourier transform as a first,
crude approximation. For a more accurate description however, some nonlinear
effects would have to be considered. And some of this already happens in the
ear.
As for hearing being LTI, think about forward and backward masking. Although it
happens at a rather short time scale, it implies that time invariance is not
always the case. Harmonic distortion and intermodulation of two sinusoids
played loudly enough also speaks against linearity.
I haven't tried the experiment, but I recall a composer collegue once
complaining about repetition in the noise generator of Csound. I think they
used a random generator with period 2^16 in those days, but it's been improved
now.
Risto Holopainen
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