Re: Auditory wheel

[Malcolm Slaney <malcolm@xxxxxxxx>]

On Mar 18, 2010, at 5:22 PM, Michael H. Coen wrote:

> I'm looking for the auditory equivalent of a color wheel.  Namely, a
> parametrized, continuous method for generating a series of sounds that
> form a "perceptual loop" that has no perceived gaps.


Hiroko Terasawa did some work on this problem a few years ago.

The color wheel works because it shows all colors in a perceptually  
relevant space.  It's just a three-dimensional (or four if you are  
blessed) space and you can easily move between points in straight  
lines.  It's a complete model.

There is no equivalent in the auditory space, yet.

The first two dimensions of an auditory space appear to be pitch and  
loudness, and then something related to timbre.  Terasawa showed that  
low-dimensional cepstral coefficients are a good representation for  
static timbre sounds.  With such a representation one could smoothly  
move from one sound to another in timbre space.  The papers are online  
at
	https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~hiroko/timbre/index.htm
Unlike previous work on timbre spaces, she started with a sound  
synthesis procedure and then measured how parsimonious the sounds were  
with respect to a linear perceptual space.  That space might be close  
to your desired wheel.

Let me know if you have questions.

- Malcolm