Subject: detection/identification From: at <lseltzerPHOENIX.PRINCETON.EDU> Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1998 12:22:25 -0400I'm not a psychologist, but I would like to offer some possible ideas - the psychologists can comment on these types of experiments. It seems to me that the issue is not only whether one can notice the difference between a real and synthesized piano, but also the question of what characteristics make a synthesized piano sound realistic. One possibility is to have as stimuli both real piano notes and synthesized notes, using different synthesis techniques and different parameter settings. Then an ANOVA test could be constructed in which people make preference ratings and one could try to identify the factors and crossed factors which listeners prefer. Another possibility is a multidimensional scaling experiment based on difference judgments (how different are these?) for pairs of stimuli. There are several algorithms in existence for synthesizing piano notes and I don't know whether anyone has made any comparisons in subjective tests. Linda Seltzer lseltzer(at)phoenix.princeton.edu McGill is running a new version of LISTSERV (1.8d on Windows NT). Information is available on the WEB at http://www.mcgill.ca/cc/listserv