A confirmatory analysis of four acoustic correlates of timbre space
Stephen E. McAdams, Anne Caclin, Bennett K. Smith · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2002
Exploratory multidimensional scaling studies of musical instrument timbres generally yield two- to four-dimensional perceptual spaces. Acoustic parameters have been derived that correlate moderately to highly with the perceptual dimensions. In a confirmatory study, two three-dimensional sets of synthetic, harmonic sounds equalized for fundamental frequency, loudness, and perceived duration were designed. The first two dimensions corresponded to attack time and spectral centroid in both sound sets. The third dimension corresponded to spectral flux (variation of the spectral centroid over time) in the first set and to the energy ratio of odd to even harmonics in the second set. Group analyses of dissimilarity judgments for all pairs of sounds homogeneously distributed in each space revealed a two-dimensional solution for the first set and a three-dimensional solution for the second set. Log attack time and spectral centroid were confirmed as perceptual dimensions in both solutions. The even/odd energy ratio was confirmed as a third dimension in the second set. Spectral flux was not confirmed in the first set, suggesting that this parameter should be re-examined. Analyses of individual data sets tested for differences across listeners in the mapping of acoustic parameters to perceptual dimensions. [Work supported by the CTI program of the CNRS.]