Effect of Several Parameters on Pitch Perception of Unresolved Harmonics

Abstract:

This paper studied the effect of several parameters on pitch perception of unresolved harmonics by measuring fundamental frequency difference limens. The parameters included roving fundamental frequency or not, type of background noise, and cutoff frequency of lowpass pink noise. Results found that performance was significantly worse when the fundamental frequency was roved than the constant case, lowpass pink noise had similar ability to mask combination tones as threshold equalizing noise, and that combination tones could be masked if the cutoff frequency of the lowpass pink noise was not lower than the frequency of the tenth harmonic. This paper proposed a set of appropriate parameters for experiments of pitch perception, which suggested that roving fundamental frequency, using threshold equalizing noise with the level of about 8-13 dB below the level per component of the stimuli, or using lowpass pink noise with the cutoff frequency not lower than the frequency of the tenth harmonic, can achieve effective performance for pitch perception.

• Periodical: Applied Mechanics and Materials (Volumes 427-429)
• Pages: 1928-1933
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/AMM.427-429.1928
• Online since: September 2013
• Authors: Jian Wang, Tian Guan*, Da Tian Ye, Zhi Peng Chen
• Keywords: Background Noise, Combination Tones, Cutoff Frequency, Roved Fundamental Frequency

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