The complex and multidimensional nature of musical timbre is a problem for the design of intuitive interfaces for sound synthesis. A useful approach to the manipulation of timbre involves the creation and subsequent navigation or search of n-dimensional coordinate spaces or timbre spaces. A novel timbre space search strategy is proposed, based on weighted centroid localization (WCL). The methodology and results of user testing of two versions of this strategy in three distinctly different timbre spaces are presented and discussed. The paper concludes that this search strategy offers a useful means of locating a desired sound within a suitably configured timbre space.

Authors: Seago, Allan; Holland, Simon; Mulholland, Paul
Affiliations: London Metropolitan University, London, UK; Open University, UK(See document for exact affiliation information.)
AES Convention: 128 (May 2010) Paper Number: 8140
Publication Date: May 1, 2010
Subject: Innovative Applications

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