The perceptual salience of several outstanding features of quasiharmonic, time-variant spectra was investigated in musical instrument sounds. Spectral analyses of sounds from seven musical instruments (clarinet, flute, oboe, trumpet, violin, harpsichord, and marimba) produced time-varying harmonic amplitude and frequency data. Six basic data simplifications and five combinations of them were applied to the reference tones: amplitude-variation smoothing, coherent variation of amplitudes over time, spectral-envelope smoothing, forced harmonic-frequency variation, frequency-variation smoothing, and harmonic-frequency flattening. Listeners were asked to discriminate sounds resynthesized with simplified data from reference sounds resynthesized with the full data. Averaged over the seven instruments, the discrimination was very good for spectral envelope smoothing and amplitude envelope coherence, but was moderate to poor in decreasing order for forced harmonic frequency variation, frequency variation smoothing, frequency flattening, and amplitude variation smoothing. Discrimination of combinations of simplifications was equivalent to that of the most potent constituent simplification. Objective measurements were made on the spectral data for harmonic amplitude, harmonic frequency, and spectral centroid changes resulting from simplifications. These measures were found to correlate well with discrimination results, indicating that listeners have access to a relatively fine-grained sensory representation of musical instrument sounds.

Topics
Musical instruments
1.
Beauchamp, J. W. (1993). “Unix workstation software for analysis, graphics, modifications, and synthesis of musical sounds,” 94th Convention of the Audio Engineering Society, Berlin (Audio Engineering Society, New York), Preprint 3479 (L-I-7).
2.
Beauchamp
,
J. W.
,
McAdams
,
S.
, and
Meneguzzi
,
S.
(
1997
). “
Perceptual effects of simplifying musical instrument sound time-frequency representations
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
101
,
3167
.
Google Scholar
Crossref
Search ADS
 
3.
Brown
,
J. C.
(
1996
). “
Frequency ratios of spectral components of musical sounds
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
99
,
1210
–
1218
.
Google Scholar
Crossref
Search ADS
 
4.
Charbonneau
,
G. R.
(
1981
). “
Timbre and the perceptual effects of three types of data reduction
,”
Comput. Music J.
5
(
2
),
10
–
19
.
Google Scholar
Crossref
Search ADS
 
5.
Dubnov, S., and Rodet, X. (1997). “Statistical modeling of sound aperiodicities,” in Proceedings of the International Computer Music Conference, 1997, Thessaloniki (International Computer Music Association, San Francisco), pp. 43–50.
6.
Geisser
,
S.
, and
Greenhouse
,
S. W.
(
1958
). “
An extension of Box’s results on the use of the F distribution in multivariate analysis
,”
Ann. Math. Stat.
29
,
885
–
891
.
Google Scholar
Crossref
Search ADS
 
7.
Green, D. M., and Swets, J. A. (1974). Signal Detection Theory and Psychophysics (Krieger, Huntington, NY).
8.
Grey
,
J. M.
(
1977
). “
Multidimensional perceptual scaling of musical timbres
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
61
,
1270
–
1277
.
Google Scholar
Crossref
Search ADS
PubMed
 
9.
Grey
,
J. M.
, and
Gordon
,
J. W.
(
1978
). “
Perceptual effects of spectral modifications on musical timbres
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
63
,
1493
–
1500
.
Google Scholar
Crossref
Search ADS
 
10.
Grey
,
J. M.
, and
Moorer
,
J. A.
(
1977
). “
Perceptual evaluations of synthesized musical instrument tones
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
62
,
454
–
462
.
Google Scholar
Crossref
Search ADS
 
11.
Iverson
,
P.
, and
Krumhansl
,
C. L.
(
1993
). “
Isolating the dynamic attributes of musical timbre
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
94
,
2595
–
2603
.
Google Scholar
Crossref
Search ADS
PubMed
 
12.
Kendall, R. A., and Carterette, E. C. (1996). “Difference thresholds for timbre related to spectral centroid,” in Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition, Montreal, pp. 91–95 (Faculty of Music, McGill University).
13.
Krimphoff
,
J.
,
McAdams
,
S.
, and
Winsberg
,
S.
(
1994
). “
Caractérisation du timbre des sons complexes. II. Analyses acoustiques et quantification psychophysique
,”
Journal de Physique
4
(
C5
),
625
–
628
.
Google Scholar
 
14.
Krumhansl, C. L. (1989). “Why is musical timbre so hard to understand?,” in Structure and Perception of Electroacoustic Sound and Music, edited by S. Nielzén and O. Olsson (Excerpta Medica, Amsterdam), pp. 43–53.
15.
Macmillan, N. A., and Creelman, C. D. (1991). Detection Theory: A User’s Guide (Cambridge U.P., Cambridge).
16.
McAdams, S. (1984). “Spectral Fusion, Spectral Parsing, and the Formation of Auditory Images,” unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, App. B.
17.
McAdams
,
S.
,
Winsberg
,
S.
,
Donnadieu
,
S.
,
De Soete
,
G.
, and
Krimphoff
,
J.
(
1995
). “
Perceptual scaling of synthesized musical timbres: Common dimensions, specificities, and latent subject classes
,”
Psychol. Res.
58
,
177
–
192
.
Google Scholar
Crossref
Search ADS
PubMed
 
18.
Miller
,
J. R.
, and
Carterette
,
E. C.
(
1975
). “
Perceptual space for musical structures
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
58
,
711
–
720
.
Google Scholar
Crossref
Search ADS
PubMed
 
19.
Moorer
,
J. A.
(
1978
). “
The use of phase vocoder in computer music applications
,”
J. Audio Eng. Soc.
24
,
717
–
727
.
Google Scholar
 
20.
Ott, R. L. (1993). An Introduction to Statistical Methods and Data Analysis (Duxbury, Belmont, CA).
21.
Plomp, R. (1970). “Timbre as a multidimensional attribute of complex tones,” in Frequency Analysis and Periodicity Detection in Hearing, edited by R. Plomp and G. F. Smoorenburg (Sijthoff, Leiden), pp. 397–414.
22.
Preis
,
A.
(
1984
). “
An attempt to describe the parameter determining the timbre of steady-state harmonic complex tones
,”
Acustica
55
,
1
–
13
.
Google Scholar
 
23.
Repp
,
B. H.
(
1987
). “
The sound of two hands clapping: An exploratory study
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
81
,
1100
–
1109
.
Google Scholar
Crossref
Search ADS
PubMed
 
24.
Sandell
,
G. J.
, and
Martens
,
W. L.
(
1995
). “
Perceptual evaluation of principal-component-based synthesis of musical timbres
,”
J. Audio Eng. Soc.
43
,
1013
–
1028
.
Google Scholar
 
25.
Schumacher
,
R. T.
(
1992
). “
Analysis of aperiodicities in nearly periodic waveforms
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
91
,
438
–
451
.
Google Scholar
Crossref
Search ADS
 
26.
Smith, B. K. (1995). “PSIEXP. An environment for psychoacoustic experimentation using the IRCAM Musical Workstation”, in Program of the SMPC95: Society for Music Perception and Cognition, Berkeley, CA, edited by D. L. Wessel (University of California, Berkeley).
27.
von Bismarck
,
G.
(
1974
). “
Sharpness as an attribute of the timbre of steady sounds
,”
Acustica
30
,
159
–
172
.
Google Scholar
 
28.
Wessel
,
D. L.
(
1979
). “
Timbre space as a musical control structure
,”
Comput. Music J.
3
(
2
),
45
–
52
.
Google Scholar
Crossref
Search ADS
 
This content is only available via PDF.
© 1999 Acoustical Society of America.
1999
Acoustical Society of America
You do not currently have access to this content.