Each oscillator represents a data point. Observations Sonic representation is heavily context dependent. Emergent properties of rhythm or melody can become the salient feature. Listening to sine tones is a taxing and often unpleasant experience.
Audible differences are less significant than affinities.
Subtractive Synthesis Set of formant filters. Information mapped to center frequency and bandwidth. Representation as deviation from a vowel sound. Sir Isaac Newton recognized the relation between vowel qualities and resonances noting that he could identify vowel sounds as he poured his beer into a flask. Thus describing a timbre in terms of its likeness to a vowel suggests an emergent property of auditory display that could be used to achieve this goal.