Contribution
Rumbling and humming as a function of loudness level
* Presenting author
Abstract:
Rumbling and humming are both sensations that are specific to the perception of low-frequency sounds. While humming is thought to be elicited by pure tones, rumbling is commonly associated with the perception of temporal modulations of low-frequency carriers. The present study investigates the effect of loudness level on humming and rumbling. The stimuli were unmodulated or sinusoidally amplitude-modulated pure tones with a modulation depth of one. The effect of loudness level was measured for various combinations of pure-tone frequency (in the range from 20 Hz to 315 Hz) and modulation frequencies (2 Hz to 8 Hz). A categorical scaling method was used to assess the strength of the sensations. The effects of pure-tone frequency and modulation frequency were similar to those reported at the last DAGA [Gottschalk and Verhey, DAGA 2024]: (i) Humming was strongest for pure-tone frequency around 40 Hz and decreased when the sound was modulated and (ii) rumbling was largest for low-frequency carriers and was also observed without modulation. In general, an increase in the pure-tone loudness level led to an increase in the strength of both sensations unless the sound did hardly elicit this sensation (e.g. was not humming).