Subject: Re: multidimensional scaling of timbre From: Linda Seltzer <lseltzer@xxxxxxxx> Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2008 02:51:48 -0400 List-Archive:<http://lists.mcgill.ca/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=AUDITORY>Timbre is an artistic term, so the subjective assessment of timbre will depend on how the experimenter defines timbre and selects the stimuli. It is somewhat like a tautology to define the timbres as stimuli and then claim that the perception of these timbres shows that this is the structure of timbre. Dr. Terasawa's work is a path to resolving these types of issues. In the area of subjective assessment of telephone speech quality, the Dynastat company found about 10 dimensions, including "background" and "foreground" dimensions. I would find it counterintuitive from a musical point of view to think that there could be only two dimensions in perceiving the sound qualities in music. That wouldn't represent how composers think about orchestration or electronic music or how performers (such as singers) think about the effects they can produce.