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If you add together two sinusoidal waves of different frequencies, how do you calculate the frequency of the resulting function as perceived by a human?

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    What does "as perceived by a human" mean? I'm at least half serious.2012-06-28
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    @ZevChonoles: Maybe it would be clearer to talk about the tone that a human hears. Maybe you could rephrase this as "What is the frequency of the sinusoidal wave that has the same tone as this sound?"2012-06-28
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    Yes, but there would in fact be a range of frequencies within which any human would perceive indistinguishable tones. There is no exact answer to any question about the real world. I would recommend you remove that aspect of your question.2012-06-28
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    Is there a good way to calculate something like the center of that range of frequencies?2012-06-28
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    You wouldn't know what the exact range of frequencies is, either, and you'd only find out the (approximation of the) range by doing an experiment, not with math.2012-06-28
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    See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beat_%28acoustics%292012-06-28
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    @IlmariKaronen: The beat frequency isn't actually the frequency of the tone, is it?2012-06-28
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    @yakiv: The beat frequency is the difference of the frequencies of the two tones (the frequency of the amplitude modulation).2012-06-28
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    Lossy compression schemes such as MP3 rely on the fact that the human brain cannot perceive individual frequencies when spaced closely enough. I never really learned how this works, but here's a link you may find interesting. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoacoustics2012-06-29
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    And another which goes into details: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=388209&tag=12012-06-29

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