missing fundamental

British  

noun

1. a tone, not present in the sound received by the ear, whose pitch is that of the difference between the two tones that are sounded

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Example Sentences

“As we have gotten increasingly higher accuracy, the issue has changed — we can now ask if there are cracks in our current standard cosmological model. Is there some new missing fundamental physics?”

From New York Times • Dec. 20, 2021

Roberts does not oversell mathematics as the explanation for the missing fundamental, but shows how mathematics can be used as a tool to predict the perceived pitch based on the spectrum of pitches produced.

From Scientific American • Feb. 24, 2018

There is a mathematical explanation for the auditory illusion in my example, sometimes called the missing fundamental: The perceived pitch is the greatest common divisor of the frequencies of the sine waves present.

From Scientific American • Feb. 24, 2018