One should not try to interpret the "meaning" of MDS dimensions, since
any rotation of an MDS solution is a completely equivalent solution.
Hence, looking at the vectors components of an MDS solution has no
sense unless you find a way to fix some dimensions in a meaningful
way. That's why different MDS algorithms can lead to different (valid)
solutions given the same initial similarity matrix. If your goal is to
find the "intrinsic" dimensions of sound data, my opinion is that it
would be preferable to use state-of-the-art dimensionality reduction
algorithms (Isomap, LLE, non-local techniques, or even PCA), on a set
of points obtained from MDS with no loss in higher dimension.
--
Jean-François Paiement
Research Assistant
IDIAP Research Institute
Martigny, Switzerland
paiement@xxxxxxxx