An objective measure of the subjective timbral difference between two musical sounds is a difficult problem. Mel-band-based metrics and single mel-frequency ceptral coefficient were considered as a way of improving results obtained from previous methods based on harmonic and critical-band error metrics. Results indicate that timbral discrimination is determined by the first 5 to 10 harmonics rather than the broad spectral envelope. More sophisticated methods do not offer significant advantage.

Authors: Horner, Andrew B.; Beauchamp, James W.; So, Richard H. Y
Affiliations: Department of Computer Science, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Kowloon, Hong Kong; School and Music and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA; Department of Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Kowloon, Hong Kong(See document for exact affiliation information.)
JAES Volume 59 Issue 5 pp. 290-303; May 2011
Publication Date: June 22, 2011

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