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Influence of overtones and undertones on melody recognition in cochlear implant listeners with single-sided deafness

Recently, we investigated melody recognition in CI listeners with simple melodies using a variety of harmonic representations of tones [Schulz et al., 2023]. Here, we investigate the impact of reduced harmonic series and the utility of undertones of one half or one third of the fundamental frequency F0. The latter could possibly lead to improved tone discrimination via rate stimulation effects in the cochlea.
The first four tones of the melodies serve as a trigger and are identical for all melodies. The melodies differ only in the final four tones.
Besides the original reference with all overtones (Reference), we presented melodies comprised of tones with

  • the fundamental frequency F0 only (F0)
  • the fundamental frequency F0 plus the third overtone (F0 + F3)
  • the fundamental frequency F0 plus the first undertone (F0 + F0/2)
  • the fundamental frequency F0 plus the third undertone (F0 + F0/3)

Below we present these audio files for three melodies A, B and C as described in [Schulz et al., 2023].

Reference F0 F0 + F3 F0 + F0/2 F0 + F0/3
Melody A
Melody B
Melody C

References

Schulz, K., Gauer, J., Martin R. & Völter, C. (2023) "Einfluss von Ober- und Untertönen auf die Melodieerkennung mit einem Cochlea Implantat bei SSD" (in German), submitted to Laryngo-Rhino-Otologie.