Modeling pitch perception of complex tones

Abstract

When one listens to a series of harmonic complex tones that have no acoustic energy at their fundamental frequencies, one usually still hears a melody that corresponds to those missing fundamentals. Since it has become evident some two decades ago that neither Helmholtz's difference tone theory nor Schouten's residue theory could adequately account for this phenomenon, several other theories have been proposed that accentuate central neural rather than peripheral mechanical signal processing. Some of these theories will be critically reviewed against empirical evidence from recent psychoacoustic studies. In particular, the relative advantages and disadvantages of the descriptive “virtual pitch” theory of Terhardt and the stochastic “optimum processing” theory of Goldstein are discussed in relation with recent data on pitch perception for simultaneous complex tones. Taped examples of some of the studied phenomena are provided.