Open letter to Ken Wauchope and Dave Hill

Ken, you appear to agree with me that the "limit" is best defined as the
largest odd, not prime, factor, in the ratios, when the intention is to
characterize the complexity of an interval's sound. Dave, I know you
just joined this forum, but I think your name was mentioned before in
that you (or someone named Ralph David Hill?) also believed that it is
the odd, not prime, limit, that best characterizes an interval's effect
(and affect?).

The majority of modern thinkers and writers on this subject appear to be
against us. There seems to be a pervasive (mis)conception that, for
example, an 81/64 pythagorean major third has some of the
"strong/steely" characteristics of the perfect fifth and fourth, while
the 5/4 just major third has a different, "sweet/emotional" character.
Supposedly, this is due to the "character" of the prime numbers 3 and 5,
respectively. To me, this sounds preposterous, as there seems to be no
mechanism or reason for the auditory system to be performing prime
factorizations. But due to association of certain intervals with the
tuning systems in which they occur, a sort of brainwashing seems to have
arisen around the prime limit concept. Do you guys agree with me? Shall
we have a go at preparing an article or Web page to defend our position?