Sound analysis and synthesis of Marquis Yi of Zeng’s chime-bell set Free

In this paper, the analysis and synthesis results from a complete set of Chinese chime-bells (also known as Chinese two tone bells) are presented. Consisting of 65 bells with different sizes and tones, Marquis Yi of Zeng’s set is an ancient musical instrument with fascinating acoustical features but scarcely appears in current music performances for being huge and inaccessible. To preserve this cultural legacy in digital form, sounds of a complete set of replicated Marquis Yi of Zeng’s chime-bells were recorded and analyzed, and the pitch discrimination of fundamental frequencies between this replica and the original set has been evaluated. Sound synthesis models of chime-bells were constructed using multiple inharmonic digital waveguides, creating chime-bell like sounds. Quality of synthetic sounds was evaluated using both objective and subjective measures. Objectively, the similarity between synthetic and recorded sounds was compared in both the spectral and the temporal domains. The subjective measure was achieved through listening tests. Results show that sounds from different bells on the rack could be successfully generated from the proposed models, leading toward the realization of virtual chime-bell set in the future.