You can actually hear the beat frequencies like tuning a guitar. So intervals like the fifth or an octave are definitely 'in tune' when you try it. Interestingly if you play a pure sine in each ear with one slightly detuned, your brain will also hear the beat frequencies as if the waves were interfering despite each ear getting separate pure signals! There was even an open source program Gnaural for experimenting with this effect - binaural beats.
I can’t hear a beat frequency against my tinnitus tones, and I really wish I could. (I’ve tuned my guitar with beat frequencies for decades.) The tinnitus tones are very elusive when I try to pin them down with a sine wave, but I can get close by alternating a sine wave on and off while I vary the frequency... the memory of the tone from a second ago has been more reliable than trying to hear if they’re close when overlapping.
Interesting suggestion. But no, I don't think so, and I'm having a really hard time describing why. It sounds like a pure sine wave, but it's so high I have a hard time relating it to any real auditory input.
Also, interestingly, since I started focusing on this it has gotten less intense.
Is there some kind of resonance or something that happens at half/quarter that lets you identify it?
I experimented real quick and wasn't able to do a great job estimating half of a frequency from playing with the slider on the lower one. Wasn't _totally_ off, but nothing magical seemed to happen when I got to half.