“Exploring Tones”: Discredited by a Siren Experiment

At least four times in the history of acoustics the assertion has appeared in print that the existence “somewhere” (in the air or in the middle ear or in neuro-chemistry) of a (not consciously heard) harmonic can be tested by the audibility of beats of an exploring tone. where an exploring tone is defined as a physical tone of nearly the same frequency as the frequency of the “hunted” tone. This assertion will be shown to be baseless and purely fictional.