Tag Archives: psychoacoustics

Data from deTune Battle

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The most popular page on this blog is a description of an experiment I ran exploring the detuning of music to 432 Hz. The re-pitching of music has a cult following on YouTube. Someone asked me for the raw data from the experiment, and so I thought I might as well publish it here so anyone can download it. If you use the data, let me know by adding a comment below.

If you take the experiment, then it will probably be easier to understand the databases.

The sound files used in the experiment can be downloaded from here (50 MB). If you rebroadcast them, you need to credit the artists listed on this page.

The subject responses for the 1,396 ratings I analysed in december 2013 can be downloaded here. Now, 16,804 responses have been given to the experiment, and the full set can be downloaded here. (Many of these were gathered after I published my blog, so knowledge of the experimental method was known and so might bias the ratings.)

The database columns are described below:


A simple counter of the number of responses


Each participant was given a unique ID


Respondent age was gathered in decades: 0 corresponds to 0-9 years old, 1 to 10-19 year old, etc. 8 corresponds to 80 and over.


Answers to the question, “I am listening to this experiment using?”

0: headphones

1: laptop/tablet/mobile internal loudspeakers

2: external loudspeakers

3: other or don’t know


Answers to the question, “The place where I am doing this experiment is?”

0: very quiet

1: quiet

2: noisy

3: very noisy


How many sounds each person has heard minus 1. (The counter starts from zero)


The first sound heard in the pair


The tuning for sound A. The music was assumed to be at 440 Hz, all other tunings were achieved using professional pitch shifting software.

For example is SoundA was 15 and FreqA 416, then the sound file heard was 15_416.mp3 (or 15_416.ogg)


Second sound in a pair


Frequency of sound B


The comparative rating of SoundA and SoundB on a 7 point scale, where -3 is “I much prefer A” and 3 is “I much prefer B”.


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