Robin Bowes;170578 Wrote: 
> 
> I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. Is "commensurate" the
> word
> you really meant to use?
> 
> Can you clarify please?
> 
> R.

By commensurate I mean related by an integer or simple rational number,
as totoro correctly says.  To be specific, I tried this with 200 and 400
Hz, with 200 and 300, and with 200 and 341.  With the first two phase
differences were clearly audible, with the last, not.  I think I
understand why this is the case, at least up to a point.  If the
frequencies are commensurate it means the waveform will be periodic,
and different relative phases will give you very different periodic
waveforms.  A trivial example is if the two waveforms have the same
frequency - they if they are in phase they add, but if they are out of
phase they cancel completely, which is clearly audible :-).

On the other hand if the frequencies are incommensurate the waveform is
not periodic, but rather what's called quasiperiodic or almost periodic,
and different relative phases don't change the waveform much
qualitatively (this is easy to see by eye).  So it's pretty clear that
for incommensurate frequencies the relative phase can't matter.  The
only exception to this I can see is when the frequencies are very close
together, so that you hear beating - in that case the phase of the beats
is determined by the relative phase, which you may consider an audible
effect (for example if the tone lasts for a time not much longer than
the period of the beats).

For real music I'm skeptical this will matter.  Still, it would be
interesting to play with real tones that are pretty pure.  I may try
recording my trumpet and then feeding it through an all-pass crossover
to see if it makes a difference.


-- 
opaqueice
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