You're mistaken; the RAW are quite specific that magical senses need to penetrate. In effect, you're using a normal Intellego spell and merely piping the response into your sensory apparatus...sorta thing.
(Serf's parma)
Hmm - was so sure... I'll get back to this when I've checked the books...
You need to reread the section on Magical Senses. They DO need to penetrate. But the penetration is recorded for every time your senses reach something with MR.
Nope - they would NOT need to penetrate (unlike the In T:Hearing spell) and the matter of Arts is important depending on your magi's scores.
Yup -my bad- it is CrMe indeed. And wouldn't recommend this to road to hearing heartbeats in any case, which is why I already questioned it in my former post.
Agreed. The question remains if this will make you able to pick up the sound of a heartbeat - and if so, if it would give you any problems with loud sounds or generel background noise?
Well - that is just a question of changing the Range, which however might be a challenge since it is a unique spell - it should still be possible. In any case it was only to illustrate that it is possible to do some alike it.
I've kind of missed a RAW on such filters. In any case that is a main reason that the T: Hearing is such a neat alternative.
By coincidence the character I'm making has the virtue... But I still dont think it'll justify him hearing heartbeats, even if he has a Per+Awaness Total (when it comes to hearing) of 8 in spite of only being a 12-year old apprentice (both his Perception and Awareness scores are bound to increase).
Cheers for the link, Sunken. I actually read through all the short description but didnt look much at the actual animals. A mole seems so obvious - thanks for reminding me. Now I can't help start wondering what MuCo (An) "Ears of the Blind Mole" spell could do.
For clarity's sake I'd better add that since I started considering this character concept last year I've now actually moved quite close to a final result (though as an apprentice and still not blind many of the notions havent been introduced yet). I seems I'll play the character in the online game initiated in this thread and the draft version of the character can be found here.
You're right and I'm wrong...
Mind you, if you simply use a T: hearing to amplify the sounds of heartbeats, it wouldn't require any penetration (unless the sound has MR). Problem occurs when using InCo or InAn to detect the hearts...
Thing is, I'm not sure that T:Hearing is applicable to amplifying "normal" species. This seems more like MuIm or ReIm. I think all Intellego spells are supposed to be targeted at the source of the information - the heartbeat, in this case. This is true even for magical senses: The magic still "reaches out" to the source of information, but through a proxy (your ears, eyes, tongue etc.) and with a limited range. Otherwise, it's just like normal Intellego. Magical senses are not "passive sensors".
Intellego Imaginem gets to 'amplify' senses by letting you, though magic, detect the presence of species that would otherwise go unnoticed.
This wouldn't let you read a person's thoughts without penetration, because thoughts aren't emenated as species. But it would let you see even in pitch darkness because, IIRC, light simply allows you to percieve the species that are otherwise hidden in the darkness - they're emanated regardless. I could be wrong on this point, though.
Now, for hearing heartbeats...
I would probably make that Intellego Corpus, hearing target. This would let you 'hear' if a human was in the area, though because it's hearing and not vision, it wouldn't give you a particularly precise location.
Intellego Imaginem probably wouldn't be able to pick out heartbeats from the other noise on it's own. Perhaps Intellego Imaginem(Corpus), using the requisite to recognize the sound of a heartbeat? That's not particularly standard, but I can sorta justify it that way.
I agree.
I agree to that too. I'm a bit unsure about the precision though. Just as you can detect exact location with normal magic, you should be able to do the same with Magical Sense spells. Remember that the senses do give you supernatural input that would normally never be possible with that sense. Especially if the spell's sole purpose is to locate angle and distance to the percieved 'target'. As Ravenscroft earlier proved this is even possible to animals - and that's without any magical/supernatural senses. That being said I agree that it makes sense to have the precision be a little less accurate than otherwise, but I'd still maintain that as a magical enchanted sense the major limit is the distance in terms of what might be senses, and not the information that might be gained.
I tend to agree - but havent thought it completely through.
I'm a bit in doubt concerning these two. The rules seem somewhat unconclusive on what degree it is possible to influence the 'species' with magic. I'm particular in doubt about how InIm T:Magical Sense would function.
Concerning species and darkness it is an interesting question. I think you could probably argue it both ways. There is an earlier thread that somewhat touches on this. If you were to use the quote from Aristotle on species I posted there you might in fact argue that light is needed for the species... but then again I guess he didn't take Hermetic Magic in account! 
Yeah - that is exactly my doubt as well! Maybe a question relevant enough to a thread of its own; how does InIm and magical senses function?
We have a plot thread in our saga that involves that very thing. It is chronicled in my blog.
verditius.blotspot.com
Is eyes of the eagle target sight or target individual?
From the definition of the sensory targets which says something along the lines of "percieve magical information through an exisiting sense" I'd say you could whip something up to work where you'd get "magical hearing" that you'd perceive through your sense of hearing.
However I can also see creating a non sensory target spell that would just allow you increaced perception without having it flow through an exisiting sense. The target of this spell would be whatever you wanted to percieve.
Certainly you could do it with Muto corpus as well but that really isn't the point
About the precise location thing...
My understanding was that that was a huge part of why sense targets are ranked as they are.
Taste and Touch are lowest because it requires physical interaction, and Taste requires something that, for many spells, would just not be very applicable... (Intellego Mentem taste target, lick a person to read their thoughts? 
)
Smell, Hearing, and Sight, though... all are theoretically long-range.
With your sense of smell, you know when something's in the general area, you can sort of attempt to track it, but you really don't know where it is. With hearing, you can sort of estimate a direction, but details are still generally vague. With sight, you can see the thing, so you know exactly where it is and several details about it.
So, for example. Intellego Corpus with the various targets, with the idea of sensing heartbeats...
Taste: Um... you can tell if someone has a heartbeat, but only by chewing on them. Again, this isn't applicable in a lot of circumstances.
Touch: Sorta silly, since you can just find a person's pulse without a spell, anyway.
Smell: This would let you know if humans are around - you could smell their blood pumping. You would be able to tell if it was a small or large group, perhaps, though a far-off large group would 'smell' the same as a nearby small group.
Hearing: You would hear their heartbeats. You could make an estimate of general direction, perhaps a guess at how many people were present, and maybe get a vague idea of someone's emotional state from the speed of their heartbeat if you were just dealing with a single individual.
Sight: Not terribly useful unless you're blind. It would let you see bloodflow and heartbeats, so you could see the general shape of a person and so on. If you're not blind, you'd see the person anyway, so it gets a bit silly.
My interpretation of the Sight target is most up for debate, since it's uncertain whether you can use it at all if you're blind. I argue that you can, on the basis that the Bjornaer sensory magic initiation seems to require enchanting senses in a similar fashion to a dead object.
Thank you for a great laugh from the comics as well as a nice story about magi hybris!
ORBS!!! 
Well, when it comes to Grand Tribunal anecdotes I only have one: one player was really working very keen and explicit on making staffs the 'rage' of the upcoming Tribunal... only to find out that as she finally revealed and started to build her item, she realised that she was creating a truly spectacular... wand Let me just say that it didn't take many seconds to label her the Criamon...
Good point. It's T:Vision, so it seems a precedens for using InMi T:Magical Sense spells to enhance your regular sensory input - as opposed to regular the InIm spell that allow you to move your point of sensing (as the Ear for Distant Voices).
In the line of the spell above it seems within RAW. As an interesting question I start wondering if it wouldn't then need to penetrate anything sensed beyond the normal range of a particular sense? That wouldn't necessarily be bad as it would make it possible for me to do 'forceless casting'.
I recall this being discussed quite a lot at an earlier point. The question was then whether, if blind in the first place, you could use the spells that let you observe a place in the distance as with Summoning the Distant Image. In any regard, due to this character's concept of why he's blind and him not wanting to challenge it, he wouldn't opt for such a solution in any regard. I've chosen that approach for two reasons - because it adds to the character description and because by giving him reasons not to, I'll keep the flaw a flaw and not just a happenstance lesser condition.
On the other hand I do think it should be possible by magic to glean information that would otherwise be apparent to any observer, yet presenting this information through magic in an intuitive way but without it being gleaned as a visual impression (whether through the eyes or purely mental). It might for example be an InCo to know someones generel description. Or it might simply be an InIm to know whether he is wearing a red and cyan dress.
Well, I have on some occations both heralded Magical Senses to be an awesome touch (couldnt help it ) that makes ME more mythical, but at same time cried out my frustrations at how abstract and hard it is adjudicate. One thing is determining the limits of the senses, another when you add all sorts of strange supernatural perceptions. Do the target (not the sense but the thing you'd want to sense with your magical sense... 
) need to eminate 'species' of the sort that can be sensed with the given enchanted sense?
As an example - A maga uses a vis detection ImVi spell with T:Hearing whereupon she walks into a recently discovered cave... In the cave there is a multitude of small handsized rocks that do contain vis. But as the lie undisturbed on the cave floor they do not emit any noise whatsoever... Now: will this maga be able to detect the vis in these rocks? Or does she have to make them produce a sound e.g. by knocking around them with her stout staff? Or does she detect them simply be within hearing-reach of them? If so, how do you determine the distance, as when it comes to hearing (and smell) but less so with sight or touch, it is very dependent on the volume of the sound. But this is a soundless sound so how do you decide how far it is carried?
It is in this regard that I read the setting of levels for T:Magical Sense spells, namely in terms of how far the sense reach but not in terms of what it can accomplish. This however still doesnt make it easy to handle as the above example was intended to show.
To take another example as to show why the sense doesnt limit the input it self (only the distance). A regular InTe spell should be able to detect a range of basic facts about a target - such as mass, size, surface and shape of an object, right? Now if you make such a spell with a T:Touch then the maga should be able to glean that info by touching an object at one spot only without having to feel out the entire object. Because if she would have to, then there really isn't any effect to the magic. Am I making sense, or is it rambling? This was meant as an example using parameters that are readily understandable, because I can only make sense of it myself by making simple examples, to show how an enchanted sense should be able to give you information that is not normally possible with that sense. In continuation it should be able to use a InTe T:Hearing spell, with the only effect of detecting stone, to know where the stonewalls are. Even if sound (beside the owl example earlier on) normally doesnt allow us a very precise judgement of direction and distance.
Can't help but toss a completely irrelevant sidenote, out of professional zeal, that it is actually much harder than you'd expect. One thing is checking the pulse, to get an impression of pace of someone who is conscious, but using it as a measure of whether an unconscious person has cardiac arrest or not is something completely different. And this is not a matter of training - rigorous testing has shown that even veteran paramedics can't ascertain carotidian pulse effectively (but as they have sufficient equipment that's not often a problem). In short; some years ago the realisation of the difficulties of checking pulse resulted in the international guidelines for resuscitation being rewritten to omit carotidian pulse and emphazising that all unconscious people without normal breathing should be given CPR immediately. Few people know this, and as the field of first aid has a tendency for more die hard myths than Mythic Europe it'll probably be many years before people realise it... 
I still think I'll stick with my previously mentioned interpretation, since it seems to me to be the most consistent and easily adjucated:
Magical senses are just as much "action at a distance" as other Intellego spells. You cast a spell at your own eyes and, in effect, they then cast ordinary Intellego effects in their turn and present the information thus gathered overlaid on the normal sensory inputs of your vision. These effects have their own Range, which corresponds to approximately Sight for Vision, Voice for Hearing, Eye for smell, Touch for Touch and Personal for Taste.
The advantage is that you get the flexibility and scope of an entire sense - you can look at different things while the spell lasts, rather than having to cast it at each thing; you can hear many things at once etc. The downside is that it's a lilttle more expensive.
Some consequences of this view:
You use InIm for anything that gathers ordinary species from afar. You could use ordinary, Ranged InIm to do the same but without the flexibility of the sense.
You use other Intellego combinations to gather magical information, that does not emit species, from afar.
So, you can use InCo to "hear" all humans in ordinary hearing range - but the spell (or sigil) can decide what they will sound like. It needn't be a sound they actually make - a buzzing or a singing note are as workable as a heartbeat. Dead or alive need make no difference
Or, you can use InIm to hear the actually emitted sounds of heartbeats. That excludes dead people. Perhaps a Rego requisite is in order to exclude other sounds.
Likewise, you can "hear" vis in a cavern using InVi, and the spell design or sigil determines what it sounds like. Probably different types would sound different.
Also, the "virtual effects" your magical senses cast need to Penetrate in order to gather information; if they don't Penetrate, nothing's detected. For example, the InCo effect above would not hear anything from a magus.
The question is whether the InIm variant can detect the species from "outside" the Parma, once they're emitted naturally. I'm not sure about that one. If so, no InIm magical senses should need to penetrate. Thinking about it, I believe the most reasonable is that they need not penetrate. Otherwise, Eyes of the Eagle would not be able to see a magus among his retinue (he'd be invisible, in effect) even though the magus can see him (though not in detail) with his ordinary eyes. A somewhat silly situation, and it could maybe even be exploited unduly. If you accept this interpretation, then an InIm T:Hearing spell (with a Rego requisite, perhaps) should be able to hear normal heartbeats within hearing range without having to penetrate.
Though it doesn't match my suggestions, I do like this interpretation, and will probably be using it this way in my games.
Thanks for the clear explanation. : )
Hmmm - that is a very questionable BUMP.... 
And not only on this thread either. 
He could use Int Terram to sense the vibrations of anyone standing within range. He would always know where everyone is and his aim wouldn't be as compromised. If he was capable of faerie magic, he could have range: road. I don't know how well that will work with your character, but it might be worth thought.
A bit of thread necromancy, but...
A recent situation...
Some silver balls are scattered in a small lake.
The Terram Master of Metals stands at the lake's shore and sponts a spell to draw the silver balls to him.
He cannot SEE the silver balls, but just saw them splashdown in the lake.
By the Law of Arcane Connections, can he NOT do this, as he cannot perceive them?
V.
[i](Hey what's 9 months between friends?
The problem is not in waking the dead if you have something to add, but that no one will ever be able to find this later, and it really has nothing directly to do with "being blind", which is the topic. Better to start a new thread. But, while we're here...)[/i]
If a mage cannot "perceive" the target, they cannot (usually*) affect it (without an Arcane Connection).
(* There may be some legacy spell effects, traditional AM spells carried over from older editions, that bend this rule, not sure.)
However, there are some "traditional" magical effects (not "canon", but classics in the broad genre) that work exactly like what you're describing - the nature-mage who "calls" animals to him in the wild, the storm-mage who brings clouds from afar, the city-mage who can call rats, the mage sensitive to one element who can "sense" the presence of that element without a specific spell - and that last is what you're talking about here.
If they're truly a "Terram Master of Metals", one would think that they could pull this off. And perhaps in a non-Hermetic system, they could. However, the counter-argument is that "If they're such a Master, then they should have a spell that allows them to sense such at a distance." And that's how the rules read.
(Reading Arcane Connections, it's not impossible that if he can see the splashes, he can use that effect as an AC to the balls - very short lived and a big spell to spont, but clearly "associated".)
It's hard to cover every base. It's tempting to houserule to allow the story to progress smoothly, but what sort of precedent is then set for other spells, what doors are being opened that will be hard to shut later, or find resentment when they are?