Title: Unmasking the components of a complex tone with stretched harmonics
Abstract: In the unmasking paradigm [W.M. Hartmann and M.J. Goupell, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 120, 2142–2157 (2006)], removing harmonic n of a periodic complex tone causes harmonic n+1 to be suddenly audible, though sometimes n−1 is heard instead. The unmasking experiment was repeated with harmonically stretched tones, where the frequency of the nth ‘‘harmonic’’ was proportional to the 1.32 power of n (octave ratio of 2.5 to 1). After a six-interval sequence with component n alternately on and off (1<n<21), listeners matched the pitch of the unmasked component by adjusting the frequency of a sine tone. Pitch matching results were comparable to results for harmonic tones, showing regions of: (1) Accurate matches; (2) reproducible pitch shifts; and (3) inconsistent matches as the removed component frequency increased. The agreement in results proves that unmasking does not depend on harmonicity. It also indicates that pitch matches were not biased by the listener’s internal template for the harmonic series in any important way. Because of the stretch in component frequencies, listeners were able to make reliable matches at higher frequencies, as high as 3,500 Hz, demonstrating the importance of frequency resolution in the unmasking effect. [Work supported by the NIDCD Grant No. DC00181.]
Publication Year: 2007
Publication Date: 2007-11-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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