Humans hear spectral content, not waveform shape or phase shifts

Evidence

However, once the sound has left the loudspeaker system, phase, by itself, turns out not to be a significant audible factor. Because both amplitude and phase information are needed to describe sound pressure as a function of time, this means that we really don’t hear waveforms. Incredible? … Phase shifts and even complete polarity inversions turn out to be “is it there or not?” subjective issues when tested in blind circumstances. Using contrived signals in headphone or anechoic listening, some listeners report hearing a “difference,” but a reliably stated “preference” has been elusive. In normally reflective rooms using music, the differences, if real, become vanishingly small or non-existent. — , Toole, Floyd E - Sound reproduction-…, 504

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A genuinely paradigm-shifting result: the whole intuition that what we hear is the pressure waveform is wrong; we hear something closer to the spectrum. Resistance-worthy.
• SEED: Article angle: ‘What you actually hear isn’t what’s there’ — the gap between physical waveform and perceived sound, with implications for audio gear marketing.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — , Toole, Floyd E - Sound reproduction-…, 504
• XREF: connects to: Sharpness depends primarily on spectral content, not on level or bandwidth.; The siren showed sinusoid partials arise without any sinusoidally vibrating source; Acoustical interference is non-minimum-phase but less audible than resonances. (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• The power spectrum is blind to the relative phase of a sound’s components #corroborates (1.00)
• The human ear is largely insensitive to signal phase #corroborates (0.95) — David Howard, Jamie Angus, coustics and Psychoacoustics, 451
• Listeners benefit from but do not fully use broadband spectral information. #expands (0.80)
• The auditory spectrum differs from the physical power spectrum in resolution and shape #expands (0.80)
• Listeners perceive the fundamental frequency even when its lowest partials are absent #expands (0.75) — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 1115