Dominant region for pitch at low fundamental frequencies (F0):The effect of fundamental frequency, phase and temporal structure

摘要

When a complex tone contains many harmonics, its pitch is usually determined byharmonics in a restricted frequency region, called the "dominant region," which for fundamentalfrequencies (F0s) ≥ 100 Hz corresponds to low, resolved harmonics. We estimated the dominantregion for tones with low FO, by measuring thresholds, FODLs, for detecting a change in F0 of a groupof harmonics embedded within harmonics with fixed F0. The spectral position of the shifted group wassystematically varied. Components were added in either cosine or random phase. For F01s of 35 and50 Hz, the position of the dominant region depended strongly on the relative phases of the components.When the envelope had a low peak factor, with multiple peaks per period (random phase), thedominant region fell at low harmonic numbers (for F0 = 50 Hz), or was not well defined (forF0 = 35 Hz). When the envelope had a high peak factor, with one peak per period (cosine phase), thedominant region fell at high harmonic numbers, where harmonics were unresolved. Generally,performance was better for cosine than for random phase. The results indicate that harmonics in thedominant region are not always resolved.