Abstract
Recently, musical sounds from pre-recorded orchestra sample libraries (OSL) have become indispensable in music production for the stage or popular charts. Surprisingly, it is unknown whether human listeners can identify sounds as stemming from real orchestras or OSLs. Thus, an internet-based experiment was conducted to investigate whether a classic orchestral work, produced with sounds from a state-of-the-art OSL, could be reliably discerned from a live orchestra recording of the piece. It could be shown that the entire sample of listeners (N = 602) on average identified the correct sound source at 72.5%. This rate slightly exceeded Alan Turing's well-known upper threshold of 70% for a convincing, simulated performance. However, while sound experts tended to correctly identify the sound source, participants with lower listening expertise, who resembled the majority of music consumers, only achieved 68.6%. As non-expert listeners in the experiment were virtually unable to tell the real-life and OSL sounds apart, it is assumed that OSLs will become more common in music production for economic reasons.
Highlights
The invention of pre-recorded orchestra sample libraries (OSL), as a modern approach to sound synthesis, can be regarded as a minor music-industrial revolution (p. 84 in [1]) which enables the recording of music without the presence of live musicians
Even expert listeners had difficulties discerning between a Beethoven Symphony based on sounds from an OSL when compared to a live orchestra recording (LOR) [6]
We investigated whether participants showed a response behavior in favor of a preference for OSL or LOR
Summary
The invention of pre-recorded orchestra sample libraries (OSL), as a modern approach to sound synthesis, can be regarded as a minor music-industrial revolution (p. 84 in [1]) which enables the recording of music without the presence of live musicians. The invention of pre-recorded orchestra sample libraries (OSL), as a modern approach to sound synthesis, can be regarded as a minor music-industrial revolution Pre-recorded and stored musical sounds from OSLs are indispensable to the modern production of various musical genres, for example, in the inexpensive production of demo songs [2] or computer game music [3]. Such sound production frees music producers from the constraints of a professional recording studio or expensive digital equipment [4, 5]. Other discussions in the field are dominated by such disputes as whether the orchestra part of Wagner’s “The Ring of the Nibelung” may be emulated by a digital orchestra [7], whether this technology will replace orchestra musicians and should be boycotted [8], or whether the virtual orchestra is aesthetically acceptable at all PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0158324 July 6, 2016
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