Having looked up what a cent was on wikipeadia, here is what it said about Human perception.
HUMAN PERCEPTION It is difficult to establish how many cents are perceptible to humans; this accuracy varies greatly from person to person. One author stated that humans can distinguish a difference in pitch of about 5-6 cents.[2] The threshold of what is perceptible, technically known as the just noticeable difference, also varies as a function of the timbre of the pitch: in one study, changes in tone quality reduced student musicians' ability to recognize as out-of-tune pitches that deviated from their appropriate values by ±12 cents.[3] It has also been established that increased tonal context enables listeners to judge pitch more accurately.[4] When listening to pitches with vibrato, there is evidence that humans perceive the mean frequency as the center of the pitch.[5] One study of vibrato in western vocal music found a variation in cents of vibrato typically ranged between ±34 cents and ±123 cents, with a mean variation of ±71 cents; the variation was much higher on Verdi opera arias.[6] Normal adults are able to recognize pitch differences of as small as 25 cents very reliably. Adults with amusia, however, have trouble recognizing differences of less than 100 cents and sometimes have trouble with these or larger intervals.[7] I thought this to be quite revealing! Alan Corkett -----Original Message----- From: lute-...@cs.dartmouth.edu [mailto:lute-...@cs.dartmouth.edu]on Behalf Of gibbonssoi...@aol.com Sent: 08 January 2011 14:04 To: nsp@cs.dartmouth.edu Subject: [NSP] Re: Doublin' (Keenan & Glackin) A 70 cent divergence between one set of pipes and another is alarming! More than a third of a tone in old money. We are approaching the territory of that Irish flute player I mentioned. A tactful cull of the outliers might be a good idea - 'Your pipes are more suitable for solo playing' perhaps? -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
