Timbral terminology is ambiguous across different users

Evidence

Timbral descriptions also have their place in musician/sound engineer communication, but this is not a trivial task, since many of the words employed have different meanings depending on who is using them. Figure 5.9 shows a diagram adapted from Katz (2007) in which timbral descriptors are presented that relate to boosting or reducing energy in the spectral regions indicated set against a keyboard, frequency values spanning the normally quoted human hearing range of 20 Hz to 20 kHz and terms (“subbass,” “bass,” “midrange” and “treble”) commonly used to describe spectral regions. The timbral descriptors are separated by a horizontal line, which indicates whether the energy in the frequency region indicated has to be increased or decreased to modify the sound as indicated by the timbral term. — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 1510

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies that subbass, bass, midrange, and treble map to specific spectral frequency regions, and that timbral terms imply whether energy must be increased or decreased there.

Related

• Timbral words shift meaning between different users (similarity 0.89)
• Timbral words mean different things to different speakers (similarity 0.87)
• Timbre is defined negatively, as whatever differs between equal-pitch, equal-loudness sounds (similarity 0.79)
• Timbre is defined as the residual difference once loudness, pitch, and duration are matched (similarity 0.78)