Abstract:
Pitch changes perceived across the transition from a driven room sound field to a freely decaying room sound field were studied in a subjective experiment. Spectrally dense organ chords were recorded in a church and later gated to provide samples from both the driven and the decaying sound fields. Terhardt's dynamic pitch algorithm was used to analyze the chord samples for comparison with experimental results. On average, when choosing a lower octave sinusoid for tuning, subjects tuned flatter than when choosing a higher octave. This result is consistent with the predictions of Terhardt's algorithm. Second, there was a consistent trend to perceive the reverberant sound field an average of about 20 cents flatter than the corresponding driven sound field. This effect is not predicted by Terhardt's pitch model. [Work supported by the ASA's Hunt postdoctoral fellowship of 1987--88.]