About importance of "phase" in sound recognition: Helmholtz experiment (Roy Patterson )

Subject: About importance of "phase" in sound recognition: Helmholtz experiment From: Roy Patterson <rdp1@xxxxxxxx> Date: Thu, 7 Oct 2010 15:05:48 +0100 List-Archive:<http://lists.mcgill.ca/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=AUDITORY> This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------000404020509070201000408 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit For those interested in the random phase (RPH) - cosine phase (CPH) discrimination in multi-harmonic tones, I replicated and extended the phase experiment that Helmholtz reports in his book comparing random phase and cosine phase waves some years ago. The results are presented in Section I (pg 1562) of Patterson, R.D. (1987b). A pulse ribbon model of monaural phase perception. J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 82, 1560-1586. The conclusion was that the general discrimination between RPH and CPH waves is possible over a wide range of repetition rates, bandwidths and spectral locations. The text of the relevant section in the paper is below, and section I of the paper lists the other, earlier reports on the topic. Listeners were presented with a CPH wave and an RPH wave in a two- interval, forced-choice experiment (2IFC), and were required to choose the RPH wave. The waves had identical power spectra composed of 31 equal-amplitude harmonics. A detailed description of the procedure and stimulus conditions is presented in Sec. III B. Three listeners immediately achieved 100% performance in this task when the repetition rate was /62.5, /125, or 250 cps. Performance fell off over the next octave and was below 75% at 500 cps. Subsequently, two bands of noise were introduced to mask most of the signal components and leave the listener with a section that was only eight harmonics wide. The lowest audible harmonic was the fourth, the eighth, or the sixteenth. The timbre difference was more obvious for stimuli with high harmonics; nevertheless, all three listeners achieved virtually perfect performance no matter where the eight harmonics occurred in the spectrum, provided the repetition rate of the wave was 250 cps or lower. Finally, the noise bands were positioned so that the listener could hear only four adjacent harmonics, again with the lowest being harmonic 4, 8, or 16. At 62.5 and 125 cps, the timbre difference was still audible; at 250 cps, performance fell off as the position of the lowest harmonic decreased from 8 to 4. Thus the general discrimination between RPH and CPH waves is possible over a wide range of repetition rates and spectral locations. Regards Roy P -- Roy Patterson Centre for the Neural Basis of Hearing Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge, CB2 3EG phone +44 (1223) 333819 fax 333840 email: rdp1@xxxxxxxx http://www.pdn.cam.ac.uk/groups/cnbh/ http://www.AcousticScale.org --------------000404020509070201000408 Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"> </head> <body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000"> For those interested in the random phase (RPH) - cosine phase (CPH) discrimination in multi-harmonic tones, I replicated and extended the phase experiment that Helmholtz reports in his book comparing random phase and cosine phase waves some years ago. The results are presented in Section I (pg 1562) of Patterson, R.D. (1987b). A pulse ribbon model of monaural phase perception. J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 82, 1560-1586. The conclusion was that the general discrimination between RPH and CPH waves is possible over a wide range of repetition rates, bandwidths and spectral locations. The text of the relevant section in the paper is below, and section I of the paper lists the other, earlier reports on the topic. Listeners were presented with a CPH wave and an RPH wave in a two- interval, forced-choice experiment (2IFC), and were required to choose the RPH wave. The waves had identical power spectra composed of 31 equal-amplitude harmonics. A detailed description of the procedure and stimulus conditions is presented in Sec. III B. Three listeners immediately achieved 100% performance in this task when the repetition rate was 62.5, 125, or 250 cps. Performance fell off over the next octave and was below 75% at 500 cps. Subsequently, two bands of noise were introduced to mask most of the signal components and leave the listener with a section that was only eight harmonics wide. The lowest audible harmonic was the fourth, the eighth, or the sixteenth. The timbre difference was more obvious for stimuli with high harmonics; nevertheless, all three listeners achieved virtually perfect performance no matter where the eight harmonics occurred in the spectrum, provided the repetition rate of the wave was 250 cps or lower. Finally, the noise bands were positioned so that the listener could hear only four adjacent harmonics, again with the lowest being harmonic 4, 8, or 16. At 62.5 and 125 cps, the timbre difference was still audible; at 250 cps, performance fell off as the position of the lowest harmonic decreased from 8 to 4. Thus the general discrimination between RPH and CPH waves is possible over a wide range of repetition rates and spectral locations. Regards Roy P <pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">-- Roy Patterson Centre for the Neural Basis of Hearing Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge, CB2 3EG phone +44 (1223) 333819 fax 333840 email: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:rdp1@xxxxxxxx">rdp1@xxxxxxxx</a> <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.pdn.cam.ac.uk/groups/cnbh/">http://www.pdn.cam.ac.uk/groups/cnbh/</a> <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.AcousticScale.org">http://www.AcousticScale.org</a> </pre> </body> </html> --------------000404020509070201000408--

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