Sensory dissonance of two-tone complexes
Andrzej Z. Rakowski, Andrzej Miśkiewicz · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1999
Sensory dissonance, a basically unpleasant auditory sensation related to amplitude or frequency modulation of sound, is an element of a broader concept of musical dissonance. The present study was carried out to determine the magnitude of sensory dissonance produced by beats in two-tone complexes. The method of absolute magnitude estimation was employed for scaling. The measurements were obtained for tone frequencies ranging from 32 to 4000 Hz and beat frequencies ranging from 2 to 2000 Hz. The results show that at beat frequencies higher than 20 Hz, sensory dissonance is equivalent to roughness. The beat frequency at which the maximum of roughness and of sensory dissonance is observed increases with the frequency of the low tone in a complex, ranging from 20 for a 32-Hz tone to about 100 for a 4000-Hz tone. At beat frequencies lower than 20 Hz, sensory dissonance is produced by audible fluctuations of loudness. The effect of loudness fluctuations on sensory dissonance is most pronounced in the range of lowest audible frequencies.