Perceptual scaling of synthesized musical timbres: Common dimensions, specificities, and latent subject classes

Abstract

To study the perceptual structure of musical timbre and the effects of musical training, timbral dissimilarities of synthesized instrument sounds were rated by professional musicians, amateur musicians, and nonmusicians. The data were analyzed with an extended version of the multidimensional scaling algorithm CLASCAL (Winsberg & De Soete, 1993), which estimates the number of latent classes of subjects, the coordinates of each timbre on common Euclidean dimensions, a specificity value of unique attributes for each timbre, and a separate weight for each latent class on each of the common dimensions and the set of specificities. Five latent classes were found for a three-dimensional spatial model with specificities. Common dimensions were quantified psychophysically in terms of log-rise time, spectral centroid, and degree of spectral variation. The results further suggest that musical timbres possess specific attributes not accounted for by these shared perceptual dimensions. Weight patterns indicate that perceptual salience of dimensions and specificities varied across classes. A comparison of class structure with biographical factors associated with degree of musical training and activity was not clearly related to the class structure, though musicians gave more precise and coherent judgments than did non-musicians or amateurs. The model with latent classes and specificities gave a better fit to the data and made the acoustic correlates of the common dimensions more interpretable.

Postrecognition of interleaved melodies as an indirect measure of auditory stream formation.

“…The indicated labels are used to refer to the sounds as a reminder that they are synthetic imitations. These sounds were chosen from among a larger set for which three-dimensional timbre spaces were found by McAdams, Winsberg, Donnadieu, De Soete, and Krimphoff (1995).…”

“…The maximum level attained Note. Spaces determined by McAdams et al (1995). VBS ϭ vibraphone; GTR ϭ guitar; TBN ϭ trombone; BSN ϭ bassoon.…”

The influence of cellist's postural movements on their musical expressivity

“…Il semblerait notamment que l'attaque d'un son décharné contienne moins d'énergie, et que sa pente soit donc aussi potentiellement plus faible. Des études comme celles de [Grey 1977] et [McAdams 1995 ont montré que l'attaque, c'est-à-dire le temps de montée de l'énergie du signal, jouait un rôle à part entière dans la perception du timbre instrumental. [Schaeffer 1966] a aussi établi que l'oreille est particulièrement sensible au temps et à la pente de l'attaque, pour qualifier le déploiement de l'énergie d'un son entretenu.…”

Applications of Evolutionary Computing

“…An example of studies of gross timbre is the work of McAdams et al [9]. In this work three dimensional timbre space was defined, the dimensions being attack time (time taken for volume of a note to reach maximum), the spectral centroid (the relative presence of high frequency versus low-frequency energy in the frequency spectrum), and spectral flux (a measure of how much the spectral changes over the duration of a tone).…”

“…However the aim of our work is oriented towards synthesis, and so we need to consider what representation is appropriate for being used 'backwards' to go from analysis to synthesis. Whilst a representation such as the three-dimensional model in [9] might yield acceptable results for categorising sounds, this representation is not adequate for synthesis of sound. We certainly could not work backwards from a three dimensional timbre representation and hope to synthesise the starting sound, since the representation is oversimplified and too much information has been lost.…”