Subjective Timbre Space of 45 Modified Violin Tones

In this paper we studied the reduced subjective timbre space of time-varying tones as well as steady state tones. 45 modified test tones were constructed from the original violin tone in consideration of 4 physical factors: spectrum envelope, inharmonicity, time-varying spectrum and time reversal. The semantic differential (SD) method was used in the listening test. According to the factor analysis, the adjectives can be factorized into 4 groups. The first factor is characterized by the adjectives, 'free', 'broad', 'deep', 'rich', 'strong' and 'reverberant', the second by 'tenor', 'clear', 'bright', 'light' and 'sharp', the third by 'easy', 'smooth', and 'solid', the fourth by 'warm' and 'full'. The first factor, 'richness', seems to be dependent upon the time-varying characteristic of a tone. The second factor, 'sharpness', is shown to play an important role in a time-varying tone as well as in a steady state tone.