sci/academic publications on pitch perception vs (extreme) musical loudness levels?

[emmodad]

Attended an excellent concert on Friday evening: Zucchero, Golden State Theater Monterey CA (small ~1000 seat historical theater), kickoff date of a short US West Coast tour. Zu and band in excellent form (Polo Jones the always-exceptional bassist; Kat Dyson was on fire, echoes of her NPG days with Prince), great setlist, great mix (I was seated orchestra, 10 rows from stage, right of DFC).

However, the sound guys must have thought they were still doing a few more shows in the just-completed week-long dates at Arena Di Verona (a Roman Ampitheatre): sound levels were often absurd. (aside: this is your mother speaking, always take ear protection with you...) I have done some live sound in similar-sized halls, this was... really aggressive.

I literally downloaded a NIOSH meter and fired it up.
Ballads, many tunes were OK but a bit up there
The rockers (Diavolo in Me, etc) were nuts for a small hall
Time Avgd sound level ~ upper 90s dBA
Max level hovering 110 dBA
More than a few ~120 dBA peaks
(refer to mother, above)

You know it's loud when vocals and even some instrumentals vacillate between pitch OK <---> sounding like they're out-of-tune.

Which led me to thinking back to my ancient days of acoustics studies

Wondering if anyone might point me to modern scientific / academic publications/papers considering relationship between (perceived) pitch and sound level, especially for (loud) live musical performance?

chuck

 

[emmodad]

bump

 

[Keith_W]

Well, it's a very old study now, but you may have heard of the Fletcher-Munson Curve:

As sounds get louder, you need less treble and less bass. So if that concert was equalized at a certain SPL, when played back at a louder SPL, you hear more treble.

The other possible reason is that at high SPL there is more harmonic distortion. Amplifiers and speakers clip, and what is heard are high order harmonics = painful treble.