Acoustic and Categorical Dissimilarity of Musical Timbre: Evidence from Asymmetries Between Acoustic and Chimeric Sounds.

ABSTRACT: This paper investigates the role of acoustic and categorical information in timbre dissimilarity ratings. Using a Gammatone-filterbank-based sound transformation, we created tones that were rated as less familiar than recorded tones from orchestral instruments and that were harder to associate with an unambiguous sound source (Experiment 1). A subset of transformed tones, a set of orchestral recordings, and a mixed set were then rated on pairwise dissimilarity (Experiment 2A). We observed that recorded instrument timbres clustered into subsets that distinguished timbres according to acoustic and categorical properties. For the subset of cross-category comparisons in the mixed set, we observed asymmetries in the distribution of ratings, as well as a stark decay of inter-rater agreement. The

SUBMITTER: Siedenburg K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4700179 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature