Timbre perception research remains too coarse to explain fine discriminations like distinguishing violin makers.
Evidence
There is still much work to be done on timbre to understand it more fully. While there are results and ideas which indicate what acoustic aspects of different instruments contribute to the perception of their timbre differ ences, such differences are far too coarse to explain how the experienced listeners are able to tell apart the timbre differences between, for example, violins made by different makers. The importance of timbre in music per formance has been realized for many hundreds of years as manifested in the so-called “king” of instruments—the pipe organ—well before there was any detailed knowledge of the function of the human hearing system. — David Howard, Jamie Angus, coustics and Psychoacoustics, 1547
Categorization
- QUESTION: What micro-acoustic features let expert listeners distinguish instruments of identical make? An open research puzzle worth chasing.
- SHARE: For someone into instrument acoustics: experienced listeners can tell violins apart by maker, yet current timbre models are too coarse to explain how.
- XREF: connects to: Current acoustic models cannot explain how experts distinguish fine timbre differences between instruments