Virtual pitch and phase sensitivity of a computer model of the auditory periphery. I: Pitch identification

Abstract

Licklider [Experientia 7, 128–133 (1951)] presented a theory of pitch highlighting the role of auditory-nerve interspike-interval timing information in the process of pitch extraction. His theory is simplified and amended and presented here as a computer implementation. This implementation has been successfully tested using simulations of a wide range of classical demonstrations of pitch phenomena including the missing fundamental, ambiguous pitch, pitch shift of equally spaced, inharmonic components, musical chords, repetition pitch, the pitch of interrupted noise, the existence region, and the dominance region for pitch. The theory is compared with a number of alternative theories and the physiological plausibility of a temporal model is considered.