TY - JOUR
T1 - Perceptual similarity between piano notes
T2 - experimental method applicable to reverberant and non-reverberant sounds
AU - Osses Vecchi, Alejandro
AU - Kohlrausch, Armin G.
AU - Chaigne, Antoine
PY - 2019/8/1
Y1 - 2019/8/1
N2 - In this paper an experimental method to quantify perceptual differences between acoustic stimuli is presented. The experiments are implemented as a signal-in-noise task, where two sounds are to be discriminated. By adjusting the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) the difficulty of the sound discrimination is manipulated. If two sounds are very similar already, a low level of added noise (high SNR) makes the discrimination task difficult. For more dissimilar sounds, a higher amount of noise (lower SNR) is needed to affect discriminability. In other words, a strong correlation between SNR and similarity is expected. The experimental noises are generated to have similar spectro-temporal properties to those of the test stimuli. As a study case, the suggested method was used to evaluate recordings of one note played on seven Viennese pianos using (1) non-reverberant sounds (as recorded) and (2) reverberant sounds, where reverberation was added by means of digital convolution. The experimental results of the suggested method were compared with a similarity experiment using the method of triadic comparisons. The results of both methods were significantly correlated with each other.
AB - In this paper an experimental method to quantify perceptual differences between acoustic stimuli is presented. The experiments are implemented as a signal-in-noise task, where two sounds are to be discriminated. By adjusting the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) the difficulty of the sound discrimination is manipulated. If two sounds are very similar already, a low level of added noise (high SNR) makes the discrimination task difficult. For more dissimilar sounds, a higher amount of noise (lower SNR) is needed to affect discriminability. In other words, a strong correlation between SNR and similarity is expected. The experimental noises are generated to have similar spectro-temporal properties to those of the test stimuli. As a study case, the suggested method was used to evaluate recordings of one note played on seven Viennese pianos using (1) non-reverberant sounds (as recorded) and (2) reverberant sounds, where reverberation was added by means of digital convolution. The experimental results of the suggested method were compared with a similarity experiment using the method of triadic comparisons. The results of both methods were significantly correlated with each other.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85070546066&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1121/1.5121311
DO - 10.1121/1.5121311
M3 - Article
C2 - 31472553
AN - SCOPUS:85070546066
VL - 146
SP - 1024
EP - 1035
JO - Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
JF - Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
SN - 0001-4966
IS - 2
ER -