Simultaneously presented tones sharpen pitch discrimination down to beat disappearance
Evidence
Experimentally, the JND is found by playing one stimulus after the other and asking listeners to indicate if they can hear a difference. If the stimuli were presented together, listeners would be able to detect a much finer difference because they would be able to hear beats (see Section 2.2). In that case, there is the potential for listeners to be able to detect differences right down to the point where the frequencies of the sine waves are identical and the beats disappear; this is the basis upon which musical instruments are tuned. — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 866
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- XREF: Connects to Section 2.2 on beats and to the earlier chapter’s soundscape concepts about signal versus noise distinction.
Related
- Presented together, tones reveal far finer pitch differences via beats than sequential comparison (similarity 0.96)
- Sequential stimulus presentation sets the JND test while simultaneous tones reveal finer differences (similarity 0.85)
- Noise intensity discrimination improves by pooling multiple frequency regions (similarity 0.84)
- Listeners hear tones that are absent from the presented sound (similarity 0.82)
- Broadband noise yields better intensity discrimination than pure tones by engaging multiple frequency regions (similarity 0.82)
- Only some combination tones are readily perceived, and none by all listeners. (similarity 0.82)
- Combination tones beat against other near-pitched instruments unless masked (similarity 0.81)
- Sequential tone comparison yields finer discrimination than modulation detection. (similarity 0.81)
- Pitch differences enable selective listening to one talker amid competing voices (similarity 0.81)
- Frequency discrimination depends on pitch strength and worsens as pitch strength falls (similarity 0.81)
- Difference noise generated by ear nonlinearities can be heard before the test tone itself (similarity 0.80)
- Perceived loudness of concurrent tones hinges on frequency separation via three distinct mechanisms (similarity 0.80)
- Detection is prerequisite to but insufficient for sound discrimination (similarity 0.80)
- Two frequencies can mechanically generate sum and difference frequencies in the ear (similarity 0.80)
- Tone-on-tone masking can be detected through beating and combination tones alone (similarity 0.79)