Natural inharmonicity makes partial phases cycle continuously, so the ear ignores them

Evidence

There is more than one rationale for our phase insensitivity to harmonic partials in a tone. Even in musical sounds, relative phases of the partials can vary naturally over time. Real strings are an example, where the higher harmonics are not quite exact multiples of the fundamental-for example, the second partial of a string might be 401 Hz if the first partial is 200 Hz. The fact that the second partial is one Hz away from being perfectly harmonic means that the relative phase of the second partial is going full circle through 2π once per second: where the phase ϕ(t) = 2π t. — Eric J. Heller, Why You Hear What You Hear- An…, 2212

Categorization

• XREF: Physical strings’ inharmonicity connects back to the chapter on real-string vibrations vs ideal models.