Short sound duration can raise perceived pitch by an octave.

Evidence

Rossing speculated that the short duration of the kettle drum strike had something to do with the 128 Hz perception. To test this, we create artificial kettle drum strikes, and check whether the autocorrelation measure of pitch might lend support to this idea. Using amplitudes (1, 0.6, 0.3), in that order, for the 128, 192, and 256 Hz partials, we listen to the result for various exponential damping rates. A very interesting trend emerges: a short cutoff of the sound does cause the dominant pitch to rise an octave. Moreover, the autocorrelation measure confirms or at least makes plausible this trend, showing that the peak corresponding to a 64 Hz pitch becomes more prominent relative to the earlier 128 Hz peak as the tone is lengthened. — Eric J. Heller, Why You Hear What You Hear- An…, 2135

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the autocorrelation pitch measure elsewhere in the book and its competition model (section 23.14).