Hearing waveform envelope beats requires perceiving phase, not nonlinear distortion

Evidence

By very clever masking experiments, Plomp2 showed convincingly that nonlinear distortion is not the cause of the 2 Hz beating. According to Helmholtz’s nonlinear ideas, a 2 Hz beating could be, for example, between a 99 Hz nonlinear distortion product 2 x 200 – 301 = 99 with a 101 Hz distortion product 301 – 200 = 101. Plomp masked the region around 100 Hz with noise, which failed to kill the beating, strongly arguing for waveform beating as the mechanism. — Eric J. Heller, Why You Hear What You Hear- An…, 2240

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains the mechanism of waveform beating and how masking experiments distinguish it from Helmholtz’s nonlinear distortion theory.
• XREF: Connects to the timing/place theory debate in auditory perception central to this book’s larger question of why we hear what we hear.