Re: Autocorrelation

[Jont Allen <jba@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Christian,

I would like to suggest that you place some samples on the web
that demonstrate the effects you are talking about, along with
a short summary of your paper(s), describing and summarizing
your point of view. Many of us are interested (some at a superficial
level) and we would like to better understand the arguments, and
get up to speed with all of this discussion, without spending a day,
or days, doing it. If, by chance, you already have such a web site,
then this would be a great time to give us the URL.

One short question: Do you, Christian, feel that the tails of tuning
curves is relevant to your mechanism B, or to mechanism A for that
matter? If so, would you please articulate why you feel that way?

Thanks,

        Jont

Christian Kaernbach wrote:
>
> Dear Peter,
>
.....
>
> > The tails of tuning curves come into the present discussion partly
> > because K & D used low-pass noise, and this low-pass noise also has
> > the effect of masking the pitch produced by higher partials, thereby
> > lowering its salience and making the task more like a pitch detection
> > near threshold rather than the masking of a more salient pitch well
> > above threshold
>
> The use of low-pass noise is indispensable. A major argument to assume
> that there is a second mechanism involved in pitch perception working on
> unresolved harmonics (let's call it "mechanism B") is the increase of
> the JND once resolvable harmonics are excluded. Exclusion means:
> down-filtering _and_ masking. As long as harmonics well below 15 Fo (say
> at 10 Fo) are either present or not masked, the improvement in JND by a
> factor of at leat five indicates that we have not yet isolated
> "mechanism B". This is nicely illustrated in our paper under revision
> (Bering & Kaernbach). For the same reason, Houtsma & Smurzynski used
> pink noise that was not even low-pass filtered.
>
> Anyway, as we employed high-pass filtered click trains there should be
> regions where the signal is relatively undisturbed by the low-pass
> filtered noise. And the use of low-pass noise does not offer a plausible
> explanation of why first- and second-order regularities should be
> treated differently.
>
> - Christian Kaernbach

--
Jont B. Allen
AT&T Labs-Research, Shannon Laboratory, E161
180 Park Ave., Florham Park NJ, 07932-0971
973/360-8545voice, x7111fax, http://www.research.att.com/~jba

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