Congruency between fundamental frequency and spectral envelope: how does it affect the perception of musical instrument sounds? (de)
* Presenting author
Abstract:
Pitch and timbre perception centrally depend on sounds' fundamental frequency (F0) and spectral envelopes (SE), respectively. However, timbre perception as a function of F0 has only sporadically been addressed in the literature.We used an analysis-synthesis approach to investigate congruency between F0 and SE in sound pleasantness and brightness ratings. A 2d synthesis space was derived from the analysis of around 1900 musical instruments and voice sounds. The space was sampled in its inner and outer parts, corresponding to sounds with low and high similarity to existing musical instruments. Sounds with congruent and incongruent F0-SE relations were synthesized.In experiment 1, participants rated the perceived pleasantness and brightness of these sounds. Inner parts of the space were rated as more pleasant compared to outer parts. Further, sounds with incongruent F0-SE statistics were only rated as less pleasant for high F0 discrepancies above two octaves. Finally, the first dimension of the space strongly correlated with brightness ratings when F0 was controlled for. In experiment 2, a more fine-grained resynthesis approach of selected instruments revealed congruency effects for smaller F0 separations.These results provide evidence for a constrained co-dependence of F0 and SE statistics in the sensory evaluation of harmonic sounds.