On the Sound of Speech and the Piano

Abstract

The article considers the question of auditory perception of speech and piano sounds, which have a relatively weak fundamental tone level against the background of high harmonics (formants of the vocal cords and string overtones, respectively). It is shown that the audible spectrum of these sounds is the spectrum of the interference envelope of the corresponding harmonics. This spectrum contains the fundamental tone as the dominant sound, which is clearly heard in speech and music, while the formants and overtones, initially dominant in the sound spectrum of speech and music, primarily influence the timbre of the fundamental tone. At the level of hypothesis, it is suggested that the interference envelope is detected as a result of the sound propagation in the nonlinear fluid medium of the cochlea of the inner ear.