Tone color and spectral spaces for steady sounds

Abstract

Perceptions of steady sounds are often described in terms of the attribute's pitch, loudness, and tone color (timbre). Tone color may be defined as that attribute by which a listener can judge two steady sounds having the same pitch and loudness to be dissimilar. Various researchers have sought underlying spectral spaces (physical) that would correlate well with tone color spaces (perceptual). For example, Klein et al. [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 48, 999 (1970)] studied vowel sounds and Plomp [Aspects of Tone Sensation 93 (1976)] studied musical sounds. For purposes of this study, twenty steady sounds (ten vowel and ten instrumental) equated for pitch and loudness were synthesized. Three spectral representations for each of the twenty sounds were used: (1) one‐third octave‐band spectra normalized to the overall sound level; (2) specific loudness per one‐third octave band; and (3) F‐weighted loudness per one‐third octave band [S.S. Stevens, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 51, 575 (1972)]. Each of the spectral representations...