Re: Paul Erlich's citation of a listeners' preference experiment...

...I asked:
>
>>BTW, wouldn't that be THREE
>>groups? 1) just, 2) 15 cents sharp, 3) 15 cents flat. ??? If the "another"
>>group was responding to "either" the sharp or the flat tunings, we still
>>don't know whether they might have preferred some other tuning. Perhaps the
>>"another" group were lumped together as simply "wrong." (Many questions
>>unanswered here.)

Paul replied:
>
> There were 5 options: (a) 30 cents flat, (b) 15 cents flat, (c) just, (d) 15
> cents sharp, (e) 30 cents sharp. One group always preferred (c), gave
> intermediate ratings to (b) and (d), and low ratings to (a) and (e). The
> other group always preferred (b) and (d), gave intermediate ratings to (c),
> and low ratings to (a) and (e).

Thanks, Paul for the added info. Evidently, no other "consonant" thirds
(than 4:5) were presented for evaluation. Therefore, this experiment doesn't
really speak to the question of preference for, let's say, the 4:5 third,
the 12-tET third or the "high third" (whatever that turns out to be). Also,
as I mentioned earlier, the respondents here are listeners, not singers--a
substantially different perceptual process, I believe, since the latter are
much more actively involved in "preferring"--indeed, creating--the tuning.

Any grad students out there in need of a topic?

Jerry