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Topic: How do you hear tones? (Read 50567 times) previous topic - next topic
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How do you hear tones?

Reply #25
Here is the sonogram of the sample :


How do you hear tones?

Reply #26
I got 100% exact answers to the table, so I guess I'm a fundamental tone listener.  But I let some of my colleagues try the test, and for a good proportion of the samples, they made the opposite conclusion or were left guessing (ie. they couldn't hear the difference).

How do you hear tones?

Reply #27
I find it weird, that someone who thinks number 1 is decreasing, is a fundamentalist, while in fact the fundamental changes to a higher pitch. Same goes for the other samples.

P.S.: Please excuse the silly pun.

How do you hear tones?

Reply #28
Every sequence is basically a chord in the normal position, followed by another (different) chord in an inverted position.  e.g. C-E-G (I), B-D-G (V).  As others have pointed out, the "center of energy" has moved down, but the root has gone from C to G.

How do you hear tones?

Reply #29
When I tried the test using my desktop speakers, I tested as a 0/12 (overtones). When I tried it again 10 hours later with my Sennheiser 850's, I tested 9/12 (more fundamental).

What is up with THAT?
you will make mp3's for compatibility reasons.

How do you hear tones?

Reply #30
JeanLuc pointed out an interesting fact:
I recall not being able to distinguish between my speakers in phase and out of phase (one pair of cables crossed).

This would correlate with my result.

Edit: Typo

How do you hear tones?

Reply #31
Quote
I find it weird, that someone who thinks number 1 is decreasing, is a fundamentalist, while in fact the fundamental changes to a higher pitch.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=358451"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

It doesn't. The pitch of the (removed) fundamental is the same as the distance between two harmonics, so as they get closer the frequency decreases.

How do you hear tones?

Reply #32
Continuum,

your interpretation is not completely right (at least as long benski's analysis is correct): The fundamental (base tone) is not removed but one octave higher.

How do you hear tones?

Reply #33
Quote
9/12 consistency with the table - mostly fundamentals then, if that's to be trusted.

This raises an interesting issue though - I am a competent musician, and I play well by ear, but I've often been fascinated by the fact that I can hear chords very clearly, but not the constituent notes. I can recognise progressions and subtle harmonic changes, and find them quickly on the piano, but I find it very difficult to pick the notes of a chord out in isolation (ie. sing them back). I hear the 'colour' of the chord as whole but not the individual notes very well.

Wonder how this relates to the topic under discussion.

C
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=358262"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

You know, that reminds of how speech recognition works for vowel sounds. You measure the harmonics, and pick the harmonics that are louder than adjacent ones. The first of these is the first formant, and the second of these is the second formant. You call those harmonics "formant frequencies."

When you hear , [a], or , the main difference between the sounds is the difference between the formants. You can hear the distinct vowels very clearly, but not the individual constituent formants.

I wonder how *this* relates to the topic under discussion.

How do you hear tones?

Reply #34
Quote
You know, that reminds of how speech recognition works for vowel sounds. You measure the harmonics, and pick the harmonics that are louder than adjacent ones. The first of these is the first formant, and the second of these is the second formant. You call those harmonics "formant frequencies."

When you hear , [a], or , the main difference between the sounds is the difference between the formants. You can hear the distinct vowels very clearly, but not the individual constituent formants.

I wonder how *this* relates to the topic under discussion.
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The formants aren't really the individual harmonics.  They are simply peaks in the power spectral envelope caused by the resonances in the vocal tract.  The individual harmonics are related to the pitch and represent the glottal excitation (the vocal cords vibrating) that gets 'filtered' by the vocal trac.

One of the issues of speech recognition is to recognise words, sub-words, or phonemes, rather than the person speaking.  It is known that pitch and related measures are often speaker-specific (and gender-specific, of course) so it is desirable to remove this information for speech recognition (called speaker normalisation).  That is why LPCCs (linear prediction cepstral coefficients) were one of the earlier features used in speech recognition, since linear prediction separates the power spectral envelope from the underlying harmonic structure (contained in the residual).  Also, MFCCs (Mel frequency-warped cepstral coeffs) which are now the most popular features used in speech recognition are calculated based on the output energies of triangular filterbanks warped on the Mel scale.  Hence, nearly all of the harmonic structure has been removed (smoothed out by the filters) and only the envelope/shape is kept.

 

How do you hear tones?

Reply #35
5/12 - I guess that edges me into the overtone category.
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How do you hear tones?

Reply #36
I'm unable to pass this test consistently. When I took it the first time, I percepted it as chords and I couldn't really decide if given test is inc or dec (depends on which tone I focus on). Then I took it the second time and I tried to "sing" these sounds in my mind, then they got somehow more consistent but different than the first time.
So, the results seem to depend on how you come to this test - if you come to it technically, like trying to figure how would you play these sounds on some polyphonic instrument (or how does its spectrum look like), then the results will be different than if you come to it purely aesthetically, like you do while listening to the music.

How do you hear tones?

Reply #37
Quote
your interpretation is not completely right (at least as long benski's analysis is correct): The fundamental (base tone) is not removed but one octave higher.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=358518"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

There is a misunderstanding. I'm talking about the fundamental frequency in the harmonic series, benski talks about the root of a chord (apparently sometimes called fundamental as well).

How do you hear tones?

Reply #38
Cool thing. I am a fundamental tone hearer with a bug. Tone 7 is inverted to me!
Is troll-adiposity coming from feederism?
With 24bit music you can listen to silence much louder!

How do you hear tones?

Reply #39
hawkeye : continuum's interpretation is correct.

In fact, what happens in the 12 sound couples present in this sample, is that they are made of the last N (N= 2, 3, 4, ...) harmonics of different fundamentals, up to the LCM of the two fundamentals. But they never include the fundamental harmonic.

So the lower frequency the fundamental, the lower the distance between its harmonics.

Because of this, as the LCM (the higher band on the spectrum view of both sounds) is the same, the frequency of the N harmonics just before LCM are higher for the lower frequency fundamental than for the higher frequency fundamentals.

So the sound which has the lower fundamental (the fundamental is the GCD of all the harmonics) has the higher N harmonics before the first common harmonic (which is LCM of the fundamentals of the two sounds).

(LCM = lowest common multiple, GCD=greatest common divider)

For example, take couple number 12.
(I used audacity, hence the screenshots are from it.)
Its spectrum is
.

Vincent

How do you hear tones?

Reply #40
If your an fundamental tone hearer and want "hear" it like an overtone hearer, concentrate on the tests long enough, and you'll soon get the "overtones only". (It's like that 3d cube thing - it can be a cube or a corner).

How do you hear tones?

Reply #41
Wombat : note that the 7th couple, on which you fall, is exactly the one having a difference in that the harmonics of sound having the lowest fundamental are taken at LCM and LCM+1*fundamental instead of LCM and LCM-1*fundamental. This raises the energy in higher frequencies, and thus confuses more the listenner.

How do you hear tones?

Reply #42
Quote
JeanLuc pointed out an interesting fact:
I recall not being able to distinguish between my speakers in phase and out of phase (one pair of cables crossed).[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=358498"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


It must be because you were not exactly at the same distance of both. In a shop, I did not noticed it until I moved in front of the listeners in order to have the speakers positionned symetrically before me. The inversion is then obvious.

How do you hear tones?

Reply #43
Quote
Quote
JeanLuc pointed out an interesting fact:
I recall not being able to distinguish between my speakers in phase and out of phase (one pair of cables crossed).[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=358498"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


It must be because you were not exactly at the same distance of both. In a shop, I did not noticed it until I moved in front of the listeners in order to have the speakers positionned symetrically before me. The inversion is then obvious.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=358613"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


I did not make myself clear enough I guess ...

So-called 'Fundamentals' are believed to be very sensible to phase shifting of a kind that is e.g. caused by steep crossover networks in the crossover frequency range ... that's why these people might prefer 2-way speakers with a simple 6dB/octave crossover.

An inverted phase of one channel will most likely lead to unknown interferences and frequency band cancellations (especially in the low-end beneath 200 Hz) which would be a rather tonal issue - a plain lack of bass ...
The name was Plex The Ripper, not Jack The Ripper

How do you hear tones?

Reply #44
Thanks everyone who helped me understand. Especially vinouz for the detailed explanation.

How do you hear tones?

Reply #45
Well, it seem I'm a 100% fundamental tone hearer which probably true because I prefer piano to cello.

How do you hear tones?

Reply #46
Since some people hear differences with speakers or headphones i tried it also and can´t repeat it. I always have the same scores and tone 7 is still inverted of course.
Maybe i drunk something away on the left part of my brain 

Edit: Brain parts
Is troll-adiposity coming from feederism?
With 24bit music you can listen to silence much louder!

How do you hear tones?

Reply #47
same as the table except for #5 (11/12)
apparently I'm a fundamental tone hearer 

I just find it interesting how different people hear things differently (or interpret what is heard differently)
Vorbis-q0-lowpass99
lame3.93.1-q5-V9-k-nspsytune

How do you hear tones?

Reply #48
looks like I'm a fundamental one too

nr. 5 is more a guess for me, I do hear a difference but I can hardly say if it's going up or down. Well, my ears aren't trained at all, so this might be the problem here. Nr.7 is inverted of course, everything else is as in the Table.

How do you hear tones?

Reply #49
0/12 so according to this I'm a pure overtone hearer. The notion of the preferred instruments though, is only somewhat correct. On few of the samples I wasn't sure and I made the choice based on the first impression. On those samples I could easily think that it was the opposite really.