Hearing perceives synchronized neural firing across critical bands as buzzy timbre

Evidence

This difference in peakiness has been studied further by Laitinen et al. (2013), where the timbral characteristics produced by various phase alterations are addressed. The study shows that phase randomization of the partials of a sawtooth signal perceptually creates a slightly larger change in timbral characteristics than when the amplitudes of the harmonics are randomized within a standard deviation of 4 dB. In other tests it was found that hearing is sensitive to the peakiness of the signal integrated within bandwidths of about two octaves. This can be simulated using an auditory model which estimates the neural firing rate at different critical bands depending on time. If the firing rate is synchronized in time within neighbouring critical bands, a buzzy character is perceived in the sound. — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 1269

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains the mechanism by which phase coherence across critical bands produces a ‘buzzy’ perceptual character.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s earlier reading on soundscapes and how signal structure is processed; group delay and phase perception tie to Deep Listening’s concerns about timbre perception.