Raising the level of a complex tone shifts its pitch downward.

Evidence

The pitch of harmonic complex tones depends on level. Figure 5.9 shows the pitch shift of a complex tone with a 200-Hz fundamental frequency as a function of its level. An increasing negative pitch shift shows up with increasing level of the complex tone. Similar behaviour was described in Fig. 5.3 for pure tones at low frequencies. This indicates that the pitch of a complex tone is based on the spectral pitch of its lower components. This result is in line with the data shown in Fig. 5.8, which indicates that a pure tone has a frequency lower than the fundamental frequency of a complex tone of same pitch. One explanation, suggested by the data displayed in Fig. 5.6, is that the fundamental of a complex tone is shifted towards lower frequencies by the second harmonic. — Professor Dr.-Ing. Hugo Fastl, Professor Dr.-Ing. Eberhard, Psychoacoustics- Facts and Models, 706

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to prior chapter material on pure-tone pitch shift with level (Fig 5.3), and to the general finding that complex-tone pitch rests on lower spectral components.