Summary:
We studied possible reasons for which a diphony of simple tones can be characterized from the listener as consonant or dissonant, i.e., as pleasant or not at hearing it, with the realization
of an experiment in a set of 70 persons. For this study we used a number of diphonies with
different frequency ratios, so that they correspond to the intervals of western music, which are
the most widespread and recognizable by the general public, while in parallel these diphonies
have variable pitch, in order to investigate whether there is a relationship between the preference of a sound and its frequency. The simple tones, constituting a diphony, do not correspond to usual notes, but we keep the ratio of frequencies. For example, to construct an octave we do not take 220 Hz (La3) and 440 Hz (La4) but 200 Hz and 400 Hz. A catalogue of the used diphonies is given in Appendix Αʹ.
These diphonies were constructed in a computer with the software Audacity and the psychoacoustic experiment with software PsychoPy. These diphonies were presented in random order to the subjects (persons). The subject responded with Yes or No if they liked the diphony or not. We translated Yes to 1 and No to 0, and studied statistically the subjects’ preferences. In other words, preference is defined as the mean value of Yes (1) and No (0). We discriminate categories as men - women, musicians - non musicians, as well as relative to age. The statistical study was performed with mean values, standard deviations, errors, comparison of mean values with the Whitney-Mann criterion and the least squares method. Generally, it seems that increasing the pitch decreases preference, while larger ratios may be preferred.
Keywords:
simple tones, diphonies, consonance, Psychoacoustics, Acoustics
