Dear List,
I have had a conversation with a musically keen retired physicist who assured me that when he holds up a tuning fork to one ear he hears the pitch of the tuning fork about a semitone lower than at the other ear. I had to say that I found that surprising. We always assume that there has to be a good alignment of frequency channels going into the binaural centers of the brainstem for example, and much effort is invested in trying to improve "inter-aural pitch matching" for cochlear implant patients. But I have to admit I know of no formal studies that have actually measured how good inter-aural pitch matching would be for normally hearing subjects, and whether a difference of a semitone (after all, only a few % in absolute terms) is absurdly large or within the expected human variability. Would any of you know of any papers that have looked at this?
Best,
Jan
--
Prof Jan Schnupp
University of Oxford
Dept. of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics
Sherrington Building - Parks Road
Oxford OX1 3PT - UK
+44-1865-282012
http://jan.schnupp.net