Distortion products and the perceived pitch of harmonic complex tones

نویسنده

  • D. Pressnitzer
چکیده

Combination tones (CTs) produced by acoustic stimuli have been studied by many authors as an efficient way to learn about the numerous physiological nonlinearities involved in auditory processing. As far as perception is concerned, CTs have been proposed as a basis for the perception of the pitch of the missing fundamental (Helmholtz, 1877). It has since been shown that the missing fundamental can still be perceived when CTs are cancelled (Schouten, 1938). However, this does not preclude a possible contribution of CTs to the pitch of the missing fundamental in normal listening conditions. To our knowledge, relatively few CT data are available which could shed direct light on the contribution of CTs to pitch perception. Most psychophysical distortion studies employed acoustic stimuli made of 2 tones and measured the different kinds of CTs produced (e.g. Goldstein, 1967). When a harmonic tone complex is used instead, one might predict that a complete distortion spectrum (DS) that reconstitutes the lower part of the harmonic series would be generated. Fletcher (1924) proposed the existence of such a DS but it is unclear how his data were collected and at which level (possibly more than 120 dB SPL). Greenwood (1972) showed that sounds with a continuous spectrum could produce noise distortion bands but generalisation of his results to harmonic sounds remains theoretical. In the current study, combination tones produced by harmonics 15 to 25 of a missing 100Hz fundamental were measured psychophysically at a moderate sound level.

برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

منابع مشابه

Distortion products and their influence on representation of pitch-relevant information in the human brainstem for unresolved harmonic complex tones.

Pitch experiments aimed at evaluating temporal pitch mechanism(s) often utilize complex sounds with only unresolved harmonic components, and a low-pass noise masker to eliminate the potential contribution of audible distortion products to the pitch percept. Herein we examine how: (i) masker induced reduction of neural distortion products (difference tone: DT; and cubic difference tone: CDT) alt...

متن کامل

Spectral response patterns of auditory cortex neurons to harmonic complex tones in alert monkey (Macaca mulatta).

1. The auditory cortex in the superior temporal region of the alert rhesus monkey was explored for neuronal responses to pure and harmonic complex tones and noise. The monkeys had been previously trained to recognize the similarity between harmonic complex tones with and without fundamentals. Because this suggested that they could preceive the pitch of the lacking fundamental similarly to human...

متن کامل

مطالعه درجات اصلی گام موسیقی ایرانی از روی طیف نتهای گام

  In this paper we have extracted the notes of Iranian scale from the traditional music played by the great musician Shahnazi on the TAR. Then, by analyzing the spectrum of the notes and by using our special averaging we have found the pitch attributed to the components’ frequency and found the interval between the notes. The results are in comple agreement with Pythagorean scale. Pitch is a su...

متن کامل

On Integral Operator and Argument Estimation of a Novel Subclass of Harmonic Univalent Functions

Abstract. In this paper we define and verify a subclass of harmonic univalent functions involving the argument of complex-value functions of the form f = h + ¯g and investigate some properties of this subclass e.g. necessary and sufficient coefficient bounds, extreme points, distortion bounds and Hadamard product.Abstract. In this paper we define and verify a subclass of harmonic univalent func...

متن کامل

Spectrum of Pitch Differences Models the Perception of Octave Ambiguous Tones

In the experiment we proof the paradoxical perception of pitch. A tone sequence demonstrates this paradox: the sequence is perceived as descending, although the first and last tone are identical. The intransitivity of pitch perception generalizes (Shepard 1964). It applies also to harmonic complex tones with variate amplitude envelope and partials that are arranged in intervals different from o...

متن کامل

ذخیره در منابع من


  با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید

برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

عنوان ژورنال:

دوره   شماره 

صفحات  -

تاریخ انتشار 2007