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Description
While dissonance is traditionally studied in musicalcontexts using rather stationary tonal structures, technicalsounds require a perceptual perspective in whichdissonance may also be assessed for time-varying spectralcontent.This study investigates the perception of dissonanceand unpleasantness in synthetic acceleration and decelerationsounds typical for electric vehicle interiornoise. A laboratory listening experiment was conductedwith 12 participants across two appointments.Long (8 s) instationary sounds and short (1 s) stationaryand time-varying excerpts were rated. The stimuliconsisted of broadband background noise combinedwith tonal orders, presented at two nominal tone levels.Participants rated unpleasantness and perceiveddissonance on a categorical scale.Results show that perceived dissonance is primarilydetermined by interval structure, as long as tonesare sufficiently audible. Sounds are perceived moreunpleasant, when higher frequencies are present andfor more dissonant interval combinations, particularlyfor the higher tone level. Deceleration sounds arerated slightly less unpleasant than acceleration sounds,while dissonance ratings show no systematic differencebetween the two conditions. Comparisons betweenstationary and time-varying short stimuli reveal onlyminor differences.