Dissonance between complex tones reduces to summed penalties from near-coincident partials

Evidence

Estimating the degree of dissonance between two complex tones might then reduce, at least approximately, to decomposing them into their sinusoidal parts and assigning an annoyance penalty due to any close coincidences of the frequencies of the sinusoidal partials. Adding up all the penalties due to such near misses in the partials of a pair of complex tones, weighted in some reasonable way by the amplitudes of the offending partials, gives an overall measure of dissonance of the two tones. — Eric J. Heller, Why You Hear What You Hear- An…, 2349

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines a quantitative model of dissonance: decompose complex tones, penalize near-coincident partials weighted by amplitude.
• XREF: connects to: Consonance and dissonance judgments stem from critical bandwidth mechanics — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 934