Does this "effect" have a name???

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RAMI

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I don't mean "effect" as in reverb or delay...I mean "effect" as in Doppler effect, etc...

OK, here goes, I hope I can explain this.

Let's say I have a set of headphones sitting on my desk, but they're loud enough that I can hear the music coming out of them from a few feet away.I hear the music at a certain pitch. When I pick up the headphones and bring them to my ears, the pitch of the music seems to go up a semi-tone or so. Is this normal, or is it just me? Does it have a name? I know it's not the Doppler effect because my headphones aren't travelling that fast...hehe...Or do you have no idea what the hell I'm getting at?
 
Is it kinda like a big outdoor concert with high winds blowing everything around? I suppose you could make up a name.
 
RAMI said:
I don't mean "effect" as in reverb or delay...I mean "effect" as in Doppler effect, etc...

OK, here goes, I hope I can explain this.

Let's say I have a set of headphones sitting on my desk, but they're loud enough that I can hear the music coming out of them from a few feet away.I hear the music at a certain pitch. When I pick up the headphones and bring them to my ears, the pitch of the music seems to go up a semi-tone or so. Is this normal, or is it just me? Does it have a name? I know it's not the Doppler effect because my headphones aren't travelling that fast...hehe...Or do you have no idea what the hell I'm getting at?
Click to expand...


Sounds like the result of fletcher munson with the doppler effect.
Called fletcher/munsen/doppler effect.
 
Cool. Thanx for those links. I still think it's a bit of both yet neither one really. It would be Doppler if the pitch change only occured as the headphones are moving towards me. But there is also a difference in pitch (perceived) between listening to them sitting on the desk and having them on my ears.
Anyway, the main reason I was asking was because I wonder if this can have something to do with the fact that sometimes I can sing a whole tune either a bit sharp or a bit flat throught out the whole song. My voice will be in tune with itself, but off from what I was singing to. It's as if I was hearing what I was singing to in a slightly higher or lower pitch than it was. And, because of that, I'm wondering if the volume of what one has in the cans can affect their pitch.
 
RAMI said:
And, because of that, I'm wondering if the volume of what one has in the cans can affect their pitch.
Click to expand...

Yes, it can. Turn down the volume in your headphones while recording to get better pitch.
 
It seems to me that the pitch wouldn't actually change. While the headphones are moving, that is doppler. However, when stationary, it wouldn't be. My bet is that the pitch isn't actually changing, but the perceived harmonics changes as you get closer to those little teeny drivers in the headphones. Try running a solid tone and see if the pitch actually does change. I suspect it will not.
 
It may be that the limited frequency content of the headphones on the desk isn't giving your brain enough data to get on pitch, so it makes one up. When you put the phones on and you and the spectrum fills in your brain says, "Oops! Not quite what I expected."
 
I believe that at least part of the "effect" you're hearing is a result of how directionality and permanance of sound changes with frequency. The lower the frequency (the longer the wavelength), the less directional the sound (the wider the sound disperses off-axis). Also, the lower the frequency, the less it is absorbed, blocked or deflected by solid objects such as the cushions around the edge of the headphones - as long as the objects are smaller in size than the wavelength of the sound.

So when the headphones are laying on the desk, the lower frequencies will spread more efficiently across the room to whatever your listening position is, whereas the higher frequencies will be more both directional (less likely to be pointed at your ears) and be easier "contained" by the shape and mass of the headphones themselves.

When you put the headphones on your head, both directionality and wavelength persistance become irrelevant; you are now hearing the higher frequencies directly into your ear with no off-axis loss or impeding pysical objects, causing the "high-frequency resopnse" of the sound to apparently go up.

This is not really technically a "pitch change", the pitch of the sounds remains identical. it's just a change in which component frequiencies of the sound are making it to your ear at perceivable volumes.

Like the Doppler effect, these properties are not entirely limited to sound wave either. I'm not sure that there's a name for this "effect", it's really just a basic result of the physical properties of waves (light or sound) at differering wavelengths and how those waves interact with matter. I don't know if anybody's name has actually been attached to the discovery of that set of properties. like Doppler's has with the definition of speed's shifting effect on frequency or Fletcher's and Munson's have with the discovery of the built-in response curves of the human ear.

G.
 
That's alot for the info and insight, guys. Alot of great educational material in this thread.
 
LfO said:
Yes, it can. Turn down the volume in your headphones while recording to get better pitch.
Click to expand...

Also, try sliding one side backwards off of your ear.
 
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