Plomp Reiner, *19 May 1929 Zeist (Holland), †21 January 2022, Dutch acoustician. He studied at the Department of Technical Physics at the Technische Universiteit in Delft from 1946 to 1953 and obtained his doctorate for his thesis Experiments on Tone Perception in 1966. He directed research on hearing and speech from 1953 to 1989 at the Instituut voor Perceptie Onderzoek in Soesterberg (vice director 1966–75); he was a professor at the medical faculty of the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam (experimental audiology) from 1972 to 1994. Plomp was a fellow of the Acoustical Society of America and an honorary member of the Dutch Acoustical and Audiological Societies. Plomp’s research topics included the psychophysiological basis of the reception and processing of acoustic signals in the auditory system, the perception of speech and music, and the perception of sound by persons with hearing impairment. He was the author or co-author of over 150 publications, including four books. Plomp’s most important research achievements in the area of musical hearing concern the perception of sound colour, the assessment of the consonance of two-tones, the perception of the height of harmonic multitones, the principles of the analysis of complex consonances in the auditory system, and the perception of speech sounds in singing. He also conducted research on the hearing of speech and music by people with hearing loss. Plomp was the supervisor of 18 doctoral theses, and several of the doctors he supervised are among the outstanding researchers of auditory perception.
Experiments on Tone Perception, Soesterberg 1966 (doctoral dissertation)
Aspects of Tone Sensation. A Psychophysical Study, London 1976
The Intelligent Ear. On the Nature of Sound Perception, Mahwah (New Jersey) 2002
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Connotation of Musical Consonance, with J.P. van de Geer and W.J.M. Levelt, “Acta Psychologica” 20, 1962
Triadic Comparisons of Musical Intervals, with W.J.M. Levelt and J.P. van de Geer, “British Journal of Mathematical and Statistical Psychology” 19, 1966
Pitch, Timbre and Hearing Theory, “Internal Audiology” VII, 1968
Pitch versus Timbre, with H.J.M. Steeneken, Materials of the 7th International Congress on Acoustics, Budapest 1971
The Perception of Musical Tones, with R.A. Rash, in: The Psychology of Music, ed. D. Deutsch, New York, 1st ed. 1982, 2nd ed. 1999
A Review of Basic Research on Timbre, in: Perception of Reproduced Sound, ed. S. Bech, O.J. Pederson, Copenhagen 1987
articles in “Acustica”: Musical Interval Recognition with Simultaneous Tones, with W.A. Wagenaar and A.M. Mimpen, 29, 1973, Comparison of Organs in a Spectrum Space, with J.A.P.M. de Laat, 55, 1984
articles in “Journal of the Acoustical Society of America”: Rate of Decay of Auditory Sensation and The Ear as a Frequency Analyser, 36, 1964, Detectability Thresholds for Combination Tones, 37, 1965, Tonal Consonance and Critical Bandwidth, with W.J.M. Levelt, 38, 1965, Pitch of Complex Tones, 41, 1967, Beats of Mistuned Consonances, 42, 1967, Interference Between Two Simple Tones, with H.J.M. Steeneken, 43, 1968, Effects of Phase on the Timbre of Complex Tones, with H.J.M. Steeneken, 46, 1969, Spectral Analysis of Sung Vowels. I, II, III, with G. Bloothooft, 75, 1984, 77, 1985, 79, 1986, The Effect of Completing Melodies on Melody Recognition by Hearing. Impaired Listeners, with J.A.P.M. de Laat, 78,1985, The Sound Level of the Singers Formant in Professional Singing and The Timbre of Sung Vowels, with G. Bloothooft, 79, 1986 and 84, 1988
editing:
Frequency Analysis and Periodicity Detection in Hearing, with G.F. Smoorenburg, Materials of the International Symposium on Hearing, Leiden 1970
