Virtual pitch

Virtual pitch is a pitch at the missing fundamental of a harmonic complex tone. It corresponds to the phenomenon whereby one's brain extracts tones from everyday signals(including speech) and music, even if parts of the signal are masked by other sounds. Virtual pitch is contrasted to spectral pitch, which is the pitch of a pure tone or spectral component. Virtual pitch is called "virtual" because there is no acoustical correlate at the frequency corresponding to the pitch: even when a virtual pitch corresponds to a physically present fundamental (or first harmonic), as it often does in everyday harmonic complex tones, the exact virtual pitch depends on the exact frequencies of higher harmonics and is almost independent of the exact frequency of the fundamental.