Caractérisation du timbre des sons complexes.II. Analyses acoustiques et quantification psychophysique

Krimphoff, J.; McAdams, Stephen; Winsberg, Suzanne

doi:10.1051/jp4:19945134

Cited by 68 publications

(69 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…Attack time separates impulsive from sustained instruments, and spectral centroid reflects the global spectral distribution. Other parameters have been less systematically reported: spectrum fine structure (Krimphoff, McAdams, & Winsberg, 1994), spectral spread (Marozeau et al, 2003), or spectral flux (McAdams et al, 1995), the latter being a measure of the variation of the spectrum over time. Altogether, these studies confirm that timbre indeed comprises several perceptual dimensions, with each of these dimensions corresponding to a single acoustic parameter.…”

Section: Behavioral Studies Of Timbre Perceptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Separate Neural Processing of Timbre Dimensions in Auditory Sensory Memory

Caclin

Brattico

Tervaniemi

et al. 2006

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

100

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Abstract& Timbre is a multidimensional perceptual attribute of complex tones that characterizes the identity of a sound source. Our study explores the representation in auditory sensory memory of three timbre dimensions (acoustically related to attack time, spectral centroid, and spectrum fine structure), using the mismatch negativity (MMN) component of the auditory event-related potential. MMN is elicited by a discriminable change in a sound sequence and reflects the detection of the discrepancy between the current stimulus and traces in auditory sensory memory. The stimuli used in the present study were carefully controlled synthetic tones. MMNs were recorded after changes along each of the three timbre dimensions and their combinations. Additivity of unidimensional MMNs and dipole modeling results suggest partially separate MMN generators for different timbre dimensions, reflecting their mainly separate processing in auditory sensory memory. The results expand to timbre dimensions a property of separation of the representation in sensory memory that has already been reported between basic perceptual attributes (pitch, loudness, duration, and location) of sound sources. &

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Section: Behavioral Studies Of Timbre Perceptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Separate Neural Processing of Timbre Dimensions in Auditory Sensory Memory

Caclin

Brattico

Tervaniemi

et al. 2006

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

100

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Grey (1977;Grey & Gordon, 1978) used MDS techniques to derive a three-dimensional perceptual model of timbre, with the first dimension related to the spectral energy distribution of the sounds and with the remaining two axes corresponding to the degree of temporal synchronicity in the rise and decay of the upper harmonics and to the degree of spectral fluctuation in the signal envelope. Krimphoff, McAdams, and Winsberg (1994) reanalyzed a three-dimensional space obtained with synthetic sounds by Krumhansl (1989), and they found the following acoustic correlates for the dimensions: (I) the centroid of the sound spectrum, (2) the logarithm of the rise time, and (3) the "spectral flux" corresponding to the standard deviation of the time-averaged harmonic amplitudes from the sound's spectral envelope. Critical dynamic cues need not be present only in the rise portion of a tone but can occur throughout its duration (Iverson & Krumhansl, 1993;Wedin & Goude, 1972).…”

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confidence: 99%

A common perceptual space for harmonic and percussive timbres

Lakatos

2000

Perception & Psychophysics

100

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The goal of a series of listening tests was to better isolate the principal dimensions of timbre, using a wide range of timbres and converging psychophysical techniques. Expert musicians and nonmusicians rated the timbral similarity of three sets of pitched and percussive instruments. Multidimensional scaling analyses indicated that both centroid and rise time comprise the principal acoustic factors across all stimulus sets and that musicians and nonmusicians did not differ significantlyin their weighting of these factors. Clustering analyses revealed that participants also categorized percussive and, to a much lesser extent, pitched timbres according to underlying physical-acoustic commonalties. The findings demonstrate that spectral centroid and rise time represent principal perceptual dimensions of timbre, independent of musical training, but that the tendency to group timbres according to source properties increases with acoustic complexity.Timbre is a complex and multidimensional perceptual attribute most closely associated with a sound's "quality" or "texture." Most studies of auditory timbre over the past three decades have employed some form ofmultidimensional scaling (MOS) algorithm to characterize its attributes. The principal goal of such research is to discover the mapping between the physical features of the signal and the mental representation of their corresponding timbral attributes by the listener. MDS algorithms usually make few a priori assumptions about the structural properties of psychological data and are therefore particularly appropriate for the study of complex stimuli whose underlying perceptual or psychophysical characteristics are poorly understood. One assumption is that timbre can be represented by a small number ofcontinuous, orthogonal dimensions. An additional assumption underlying past studies has been that the timbres of two or more sounds should be compared under controlled conditions in which the pitch, loudness, and duration ofsuch sounds have been equalized in order to control for possible interactions between these parameters and timbre.Consistent reports have emerged in the literature regarding the principal acoustic determinants of timbre perception. For example, using synthetic tones with determined sets of tim bra I attributes, Miller and Carterette (1975) reported that the number of harmonics comprising

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“…In addition to the W/H ratio, we found that the subjects also discriminated the bars on the basis of their spectral centroids (i.e., the center of gravity of the sound spectrum, expressed as amplitude-weighted mean frequency). The spectral centroid (SC) for the attack portion of each sound was computed using the following formula (after Krimphoff, McAdams, & Winsberg, 1994): Values for An were calculated using two different types of spectral information: (1) all spectral components within 50 dB of the maximum signal amplitude, averaged separately for four time periods, and (2) the 7-8 components with the largest peaks, each calculated as the mean frequency across consecutive 5-msec time frames during the first 100 msec of each sound (see Table 2). Only centroid values computed from peak spectral information correlated strongly with the second dimension of the EXSCAL solution.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The representation of auditory source characteristics: Simple geometric form

Lakatos

McAdams

Causse

1997

Perception & Psychophysics

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Two experiments examined listeners' ability to discriminate the geometric shape of simple resonating bodies on the basis of their corresponding auditory attributes. In cross-modal matching tasks, subjects listened to recordings of pairs of metal bars (Experiment 1) or wooden bars (Experiment 2) struck in sequence and then selected a visual depiction of the bar cross sections that correctly represented their relative widths and heights from two opposing pairs presented on a computer screen. Multidimensional scaling solutions derived from matching scores for metal and wooden bars indicated that subjects' performance varied directly with increasing differences in the width/height (WIH) ratios of both sets of bars. Subsequent acoustic analyses revealed that the frequency components from torsional vibrational modes and the ratios of frequencies of transverse bending modes in the bars correlated strongly with both the bars' WIH ratios and bar coordinates in the multidimensional configurations. The results suggest that listeners can encode the auditory properties of sound sources by extracting certain invariant physical characteristics of their gross geometric properties from their acoustic behavior.The human auditory system possesses a remarkable ability to differentiate acoustic signals on the basis of the behavior of their sound-producing sources. For instance, we can recognize the gender of a human walker by listening to his or her footsteps (Li, Logan, & Pastore, 1991), a process undoubtedly similar in complexity to the visual identification of gender through the detection of coordinated movement of discrete points oflight distributed on a walker's body (Johansson, 1973). We can also often determine, to a coarse approximation, the extensity of a sonic object by listening to it under different conditions ofexcitation, such as a hollow metal cylinder that is tapped with the finger at different locations and with different levels offorce. Our ability to perform such acts of recognition and discrimination suggests that the auditory system is highly adept at encoding the spectral and temporal This research was supported in part by a CogniSciences postdoctoral fellowship from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique to S.L. and a grant from the Ministere de l'Environnement to S.M. We thank the author Bennett Smith for his design of the PsiExp computer program, Michel Ducourau for his assistance in fabricating the bars, and Koei Kudo for her help in analyzing the data. Correspondence should be addressed to S. Lakatos, Washington State University, 14204 N.E. Salmon Creek Ave., Vancouver, WA 98686 (e-mail: lakatos@ vancouver.wsu.edu).properties of sound events into mental representations that reflect aspects of the physical and spatial properties of the sound sources themselves (McAdams, 1993).Several studies have examined the psychophysical relation between the perceptual characteristics ofsound events and the physical/acoustic properties of their sources, with the aim ofdiscovering acoustic features ofsounds that...

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Caractérisation du timbre des sons complexes.II. Analyses acoustiques et quantification psychophysique

Cited by 68 publications

References 5 publications

Separate Neural Processing of Timbre Dimensions in Auditory Sensory Memory

Separate Neural Processing of Timbre Dimensions in Auditory Sensory Memory

A common perceptual space for harmonic and percussive timbres

The representation of auditory source characteristics: Simple geometric form

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