A Perceptual Pitch Detector

We have implemented a pitch detector based on Licklider’s “Duplex Theory” of pitch perception, and tested it on a variety of stimuli from human perceptual tests. We believe that this approach accurately models how humans perceive pitch. We show that it correctly identifies the pitch of complex harmonic and inharmonic stimuli, and that it is robust in the face of noise and phase changes. This perceptual pitch detector combines a cochlear model with a bank of autocorrelators. By performing an independent autocorrelation for each channel, the pitch detector is relatively insensitive to phase changes across channels. The information in the correlogram is filtered, nonlinearly enhanced, and summed across channels. Peaks are identified and a pitch is then proposed that is consistent with the peaks.