On the Question About the Sound of Speech and Piano

The issue of auditory perception of speech and piano sounds, which have a relatively weak fundamental tone level against the background of high harmonics (formants of the vocal cords and string overtones, respectively), is considered. It is shown that the audible spectrum of these sounds is the spectrum of the interference envelope of oscillations of the corresponding harmonics. This spectrum contains the fundamental tone as the dominant sound, which is clearly heard in speech and music, while the formants and overtones, initially dominant in the sound spectrum of speech and music, primarily affect the timbre of the fundamental tone. At the hypothesis level, it is indicated that the vibration interference envelope is isolated (detected) as a result of the propagation of sound waves in the nonlinear fluid medium of the cochlea of the inner ear.