Hearing people tend to perceive vibrations or sound: thus a very low C {below the bottom of the piano scale} might be heard as a low C or a toneless fluttering of sixteen vibrations per second. An octave below this, we would hear only fluttering; an octave above this {thirty-two vibrations a second}, we would hear a low note with no fluttering. The perception of "tone" within the hearing range is a sort of synthetic judgment or construct of the normal auditory system {see Helmholtz's The Sensations of Tone, first published in 1862}.
( Oliver Sacks )
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