sine waves and perception

Well, I don't think my hearing aparatus responds markedly different than
others, judging from what I've read, so maybe keep some of these things in
mind when playing with sine tones:
Especially with sine waves, loudness has a terrific impact on your
perception of pitch and how much it's changed. An interesting experiment:
listen to a sustained sine tone in the 100-500 hz range for 30 seconds at a
mezzo-forte volume and see if you can remember what the not's supposed to
be, or, does it appear to be just this all-encompassing sound object?
As you increase the volume what happens to the perceived pitch? For me, at
freqs around 100 hz or so the pitch seems to rise a good minor 3rd before I
perceive the sound as _very loud. (That's sumpthn for one with "perfect
pitch" to have to admit.)
As to reproducing sine waves: that's one of those things Nature abhors, like
a vacuum. Things just don't like to vibrate linearily if they can help it,
so the more stages the sine has to negotiate, including our ears, the more
stuff's added.
Then, on t'other hand (or ear, maybe) a scope can register a surprising
amount of visual distortion of a sine wave before the ear cares much, or at
least, before mine do. And if you disagree, you simply have different ears.
Other musician friends of mine can pick out electronic distortion long
before I, and yet I can hear the same range of frequencies.
So who knows, actually polyphonic music done in sine waves could have some
unexpected results. Keep it up
Jay

In a message dated 9/19/99 9:02:18 PM, Jay Williams <jaywill@utah-inter.net>
wrote:

>Especially with sine waves, loudness has a terrific impact on your
>perception of pitch and how much it's changed.

yes, loud sound/noise can create audio illusions (listen to
music by Mayanne Amacher or Merzbow to experience
effects of loudness, pitch, difference tonality & audiotory
overload).

also check out the audiotory illusions at:
http://www.exploratorium.edu/exhibits/highest_note/ex.about.fr.html

zHANg