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Originally Posted by pauln
Edit - I’ve found some references to effects on perceived pitch by varying volume levels. So perhaps my experiment would have resulted in an effect if I played the music much louder. That’s not a proximity effect though, except in the sense that sound gets louder as it gets closer to your ear. In free space the power increases by square of the distance, so putting on headphones would have a great effect on volume.
Another possible effect: The human auditory system is able to perceive pitch of a complex signal from the harmonics even when the fundamental frequency itself is suppressed. When you remove headphones, the bass frequencies drop out, so pitch perception probably relies more heavily on this effect than when the headphones are on. I’ll speculate that the perceived pitch based on this reconstruction from harmonics might be less accurate than if the fundamental were present. If that error is biased toward the flat side when the fundamental is missing that might explain the perception of being perceived as flat when headphones are removed. Even if that is true, I wouldn’t describe it as a proximity effect.
I think the unpleasantness of singing with headphones has more to do with how the headphones change the acoustic properties of your head and the transmission of your voice to the ear. Try singing a capella with closed back headphones (turned off) or your hands over your ears. Your voice is mostly received through bone and tissue rather than the air, and it sounds horrible.Last edited by KirkP; 09-26-2018 at 01:17 PM.
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09-26-2018 12:01 PM
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Originally Posted by KirkP
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Originally Posted by KirkP
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