The contribution of selected auditory sensations to the prediction of preference judgements for consonant and dissonant sounds

Abstract

Product sounds with clearly audible tonal components are often perceived as unpleasant or annoying. If different simultaneously operating aggregates are present in a system, for example vehicle engines and gearboxes, the interaction of tonal components, similar to music, can evoke additional sensations in human auditory perception. Supplementary to a pronounced tonality, such sounds can also yield distinct degrees of consonance or dissonance between tones. Previous studies showed that the perceived dissonance had a high impact on preference judgements for sounds with similar tonality. In experiments of the present study, sounds that differed in tonality were rated with respect to the auditory sensations sharpness, tonality and dissonance by one group of participants while another group only carried out a preference task. Thereout a model for predicting perceived preference is derived from the subjective judgements of auditory sensations. The performance of the preference predictions based on subjective judgements will be compared against purely model-based predictions using different algorithms for acoustic attributes.