Critical bands govern tonal discrimination and timbre, not overall hearing resolution

Evidence

Psychoacoustics is the study of how humans perceive sound. … This chapter introduces the main anatomical structures of the human hearing system that form the path along which incoming music signals travel up to the point where the signal is carried by nerve fibers from the ear(s) to the brain. It also introduces the concept of “critical bands,” which is the single most important psychoacoustic principle for an understanding of the perception of music and other sounds in terms of pitch, loudness and timbre. — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 508 (#expands, via linked claim)

Pure tones appear relatively rarely in nature. Only some bird songs and the sounds produced by a flute can be considered to be pure tones. Most of the instrumental sounds in music are composed of a fundamental tone and many harmonics. The difference in timbre produced by different musical instruments depends on the frequency spectra of their harmonics. Whereas a flute produces primarily one single component, the fundamental, a trumpet produces many harmonic partials and therefore elicits a much broader masking effect than a flute. — Professor Dr.-Ing. Hugo Fastl, Professor Dr.-Ing. Eberhard, Psychoacoustics- Facts and Models, 449 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Fletcher defined critical bands as noise regions whose power equals a just-masked tone’s — Professor Dr.-Ing. Hugo Fastl, Professor Dr.-Ing. Eberhard, Psychoacoustics- Facts and Models, 865; The critical-band-rate scale mirrors hearing better than raw frequency; The critical band concept is the key to understanding perceived pitch, loudness, and timbre (+5 more)

Related

• The critical band concept is the key to understanding perceived pitch, loudness, and timbre (similarity 0.92)
• Critical bands are the most important psychoacoustic principle for music perception (similarity 0.90)
• The critical-band-rate scale mirrors hearing better than raw frequency (similarity 0.86)
• Timbre perception can be analyzed through component-to-component masking interactions (similarity 0.86)
• Masked spectral components do not contribute to perceived timbre (similarity 0.86)
• Instrument timbre differences stem from harmonic spectra that shape masking breadth (similarity 0.86)
• Fletcher defined critical bands as noise regions whose power equals a just-masked tone’s (similarity 0.85)
• Musicians describe sounds using pitch, loudness, and timbre descriptors (similarity 0.84)
• Timbre reduces to a weighted ratio of fundamental and resolved versus unresolved harmonics (similarity 0.83)
• Clinical masking directly applies Fletcher’s critical band theory (similarity 0.83)
• Critical bandwidth marks the perceptual shift from rough to smooth tone resolution (similarity 0.83)
• Threshold in quiet depends on total sound intensity within one critical band only (similarity 0.83)
• Spectral variations inside one critical band alter perceived timbre (similarity 0.83)
• Masked threshold of a tone by white noise is computable from critical-band level (similarity 0.82)
• The ear sums all sound energy within a critical band into one perceived item (similarity 0.82)

Broader Connections

• The critical band concept is the key to understanding perceived pitch, loudness, and timbre #expands (0.82)
• Critical bands are the most important psychoacoustic principle for music perception #expands (0.78) — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 508
• Instrument timbre differences stem from harmonic spectra that shape masking breadth #expands (0.74) — Professor Dr.-Ing. Hugo Fastl, Professor Dr.-Ing. Eberhard, Psychoacoustics- Facts and Models, 449
• Masking acts within critical bandwidths, leaving distant-frequency sounds unaffected #expands (0.72) — Eric J. Heller, Why You Hear What You Hear- An…, 2009
• Timbre reduces to a weighted ratio of fundamental and resolved versus unresolved harmonics #expands (0.72)