Complex tones above 6 kHz retain musical pitch while pure tones do not.

Evidence

More recently, Oxenham et al. ( 2011 ) showed that complex tones whose audible harmonics all fall above 6 kHz can evoke a robust sense of pitch and musical interval, but high-frequency pure tones did not, even though the just noticeable difference for the latter was less than 1.5 %. They concluded either that there is sufficient phase-locking present at high frequencies to derive complex musical pitch, or that a complex pitch can be derived in the absence of phase locking. Pertaining to this, Moore and Ernst ( 2012 ) reported DLFs for center frequencies from 2 to 14 kHz that were consistent with the idea that there is a transition from a temporal to a place mechanism at about 8 kHz, rather than at 4–5 kHz, as commonly assumed. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 5396

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• XREF: This is the key empirical challenge to the 4-5 kHz phase-locking ceiling — the same contested boundary this chapter probes with ZTs.

Related

• Complex high-frequency tones evoke pitch where pure tones fail above 6 kHz. (similarity 0.94)
• Musical instrument range stays below the auditory pitch-perception ceiling (similarity 0.85)
• Phase-locked neural timing underlies musical pitch and is limited above 4-5 kHz. (similarity 0.84)
• Pitch strength of pure tones varies with their frequency (similarity 0.84)
• Musical pitch perception spans roughly 30 Hz to 4 kHz. (similarity 0.84)
• Raising the level of a complex tone shifts its pitch downward. (similarity 0.83)
• Musically trained listeners can judge pitch intervals even above the phase-locking limit (similarity 0.83)
• Pure tones alone cannot sustain musical interest (similarity 0.83)
• Phase-locking limits matter far less when envelope-fine-structure interaction encodes pitch (similarity 0.82)
• High-pitched sounds above 5 kHz offer few harmonics, so pitch perception degrades sharply. (similarity 0.82)
• Human pitch sense spans 0 to roughly 5000 Hz, distinct from partial perception (similarity 0.82)
• Place code governs pitch perception of pure tones above about 4 to 5 kHz (similarity 0.81)
• Weak musical pitch perception can persist without peripheral phase locking. (similarity 0.81)
• Complex-tone pitch tracks the spectral pitch of lower components (similarity 0.81)
• Shifted complex tones cannot isolate pure temporal fine structure effects in pitch (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• Tone sequences restricted to 100-3200 Hz avoid inaudible pitches in normal hearers #corroborates (0.75) — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 5290
• Musical instrument range stays below the auditory pitch-perception ceiling #expands (0.72) — Eric J. Heller, Why You Hear What You Hear- An…, 2167