Measuring similarity of musical timbres
Paul Iverson, Carol L. Krumhansi · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1991
Similarity scaling, adjective sealing, and acoustic measurements were used to assess the similarity of 16 digitally recorded tones produced by orchestral instruments playing the same pitch. In similarity scaling experiments, subjects rated the similarity of the tones on a continuous scale. Similarity scaling experiments were run on the complete tones, the first 85 ms of the tones, and on the tones with the first 85 ms removed. In an adjective scaling experiment, subjects rated each complete tone on 21 different adjective scales. Acoustic measurements included correlations between the amplitude spectra of the tones, and correlations between amplitude spectra at regular intervals within each tone. The results of these experiments were analyzed using correlations, multidimensional sealing, factor analyses, and linear regressions. The ratings from the three similarity scaling experiments were highly correlated with each other, and they were each moderately correlated with the results of the adjective scaling experiment. Acoustic attributes were identified that correlated with the results from the other two methods, thus isolating factors common to all three methods. [Work supported by Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society.]