Exploring the temporal mechanism involved in the pitch of unresolved harmonics

Abstract

This paper continues a line of research initiated by Kaernbach and Demany [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 104, 2298-2306 (1998)], who employed filtered click sequences to explore the temporal mechanism involved in the pitch of unresolved harmonics. In a first experiment, the just noticeable difference (jnd) for the fundamental frequency (F0) of high-pass filtered and low-pass masked click trains was measured, with F0 (100 to 250 Hz) and the cut frequency (0.5 to 6 kHz) being varied orthogonally. The data confirm the result of Houtsma and Smurzynski [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 87, 304-310 (1990)] that a pitch mechanism working on the temporal structure of the signal is responsible for analyzing frequencies higher than ten times the fundamental. Using high-pass filtered click trains, however, the jnd for the temporal analysis is at 1.2% as compared to 2%-3% found in studies using band-pass filtered stimuli. Two further experiments provide evidence that the pitch of this stimulus can convey musical information. A fourth experiment replicates the finding of Kaernbach and Demany on first- and second-order regularities with a cut frequency of 2 kHz and extends the paradigm to binaural aperiodic click sequences. The result suggests that listeners can detect first-order temporal regularities in monaural click streams as well as in binaurally fused click streams.