Coordinating our actions with external events is crucial for many behaviours. Nonlinear dynamics accounts suggest that individuals synchronize most optimally at the rates at which they spontaneously perform such actions. Since synchronization involves both motor and perceptual processes, it is unknown whether the benefits of producing actions at spontaneous rates arise only in motor performance or are also found in purely perceptual tasks. This study investigated whether perception of rhythmic auditory sequences employs the same nonlinear dynamics as the production of analogous musical behaviour – in this case, singing familiar melodies. Participants performed two tasks: (1) a singing task, to identify individuals’ spontaneous rates, and (2) a perceptual task, where a melody was presented at different tempi (centred around the participant’s own spontaneous rate) with a metronome click superimposed at different degrees of synchrony. Participants judged whether metronome clicks occurred earlier than, later than, or in synchrony with melody tones. A large range of individual spontaneous rates was found but perception was not superior closer to said rates. In fact, sensitivity to asynchrony was often reduced at rates closer to spontaneous tempi. Overall, participants performed better at the perceptual task when asynchronies were larger (40 ms). Smaller asynchronies (20 ms) were more accurately identified if the metronome followed (rather than preceded) melody tones, suggesting an order bias in perception of the sounds. Individuals with greater musical training also showed greater sensitivity to asynchrony; findings with participants with less training suggest that more salient asynchronies are required to evaluate perceptual biases in the broad population.