Sensory consonance depends on roughness, sharpness, and tonalness

Evidence

The other contribution to musical consonance is sensory consonance, which is based on psychoacoustic sensations such as roughness, sharpness and tonalness, here defined in contradistinction to noisiness. Sensory consonance represents the general aspect of tonal pleasantness, i.e. a nonmusic-specific aspect. Experience in music shows that roughness should be avoided if pleasantness is to be expected. Sharpness shows a similar effect and should be kept small in order not to reduce pleasantness. Another item from psychoacoustics, the tonalness, describes the hearing-related characteristic of how a sound differs from noise. Consequently, tonalness is the opposite of noisiness. Tonalness of a sound is higher the more audible tonal components are available. This means that noise components should be as small as possible. Tonalness has a close relation to the spectral pitch patterns and can be described quantitatively by them. — Professor Dr.-Ing. Hugo Fastl, Professor Dr.-Ing. Eberhard, Psychoacoustics- Facts and Models, 2040

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines sensory consonance through its three measurable psychoacoustic components: roughness, sharpness, and tonalness (opposite of noisiness).
• XREF: Tonalness as opposite of noisiness and related to spectral pitch echoes earlier chapters’ treatment of sharpness as a sensation metrically defined in acum. — connects to: Sensory pleasantness decreases as sound sharpness increases — Professor Dr.-Ing. Hugo Fastl, Professor Dr.-Ing. Eberhard, Psychoacoustics- Facts and Models, 1364; Perception of two tones progresses from beats to roughness to smoothness — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 575; Consonance perception depends on harmonics up to about the seventh (+9 more)
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Professor Dr.-Ing. Hugo Fastl, Professor Dr.-Ing. Eberhard, Psychoacoustics- Facts and Models, 2040

Broader Connections

• Fast amplitude modulations within a critical band produce roughness perception #expands (0.90) — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 1237
• Perception of two tones progresses from beats to roughness to smoothness #expands (0.85) — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 575
• Perceived roughness from beating depends on basilar-membrane critical bands. #expands (0.85)
• Critical bandwidth marks the perceptual shift from rough to smooth tone resolution #expands (0.85)
• Consonance perception depends on harmonics up to about the seventh #expands (0.82)
• Consonance judgments rest on psychoacoustic critical bandwidth #expands (0.75)