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Music or sound professionals use specific terminology to communicate about timbre. Some key terms do not come from the sound domain and do not have a clear definition due to their metaphorical nature. This work aims to reveal shared meanings of four well-used timbre attributes: bright, warm, round, and rough. We conducted two complementary studies with French sound and music experts (e.g., composers, sound engineers, sound designers, musicians, etc.). First, we led interviews to gather definitions and instrumental sound examples for the four attributes (N = 32). Second, using an online survey, we tested the relevance and consensus on multiple descriptions most frequently evoked during the interviews (N = 51). The analysis of the rich corpus of verbalizations from the interviews yielded the main description strategies used by the experts, namely acoustic, metaphorical, and source-related. We also derived definitions for the attributes based on significantly relevant and consensual descriptions according to the survey results. Importantly, the definitions rely heavily on metaphorical descriptions. In sum, this study presents an overview of the shared meaning and perception of four metaphorical timbre attributes in the French language.

Communication between sound and music experts is based on the shared understanding of a metaphorical vocabulary derived from other sensory modalities. Yet, the impact of sound expertise on the mental representation of these sound concepts remains blurry. To address this issue, we investigated the acoustic portraits of four metaphorical sound concepts (brightness, warmth, roundness, and roughness) in three groups of participants (sound engineers, conductors, and non-experts). Participants (N = 24) rated a corpus of orchestral instrument sounds (N = 520) using Best–Worst Scaling. With this data-driven method, we sorted the sound corpus for each concept and population. We compared the population ratings and ran machine learning algorithms to unveil the acoustic portraits of each concept. Overall, the results revealed that sound engineers were the most consistent. We found that roughness is widely shared while brightness is expertise dependent. The frequent use of brightness by expert populations suggests that its meaning got specified through sound expertise. As for roundness and warmth, it seems that the importance of pitch and noise in their acoustic definition is the key to distinguishing them. These results provide crucial information on the mental representations of a metaphorical vocabulary of sound and whether it is shared or refined by sound expertise.

Music or sound professionals use specific terminology to communicate about timbre. Some key terms do not come from the sound domain and do not have a clear definition due to their metaphorical nature. This work aims to reveal the shared meaning and to clarify the definition of four well-used timbre attributes: bright, warm, round, and rough. We conducted two complementary studies with French sound and music experts (e.g. composers, sound engineers, sound designers, musicians, etc.). First, we led interviews to gather definitions and instrumental sound examples for the four attributes (N=32). Second, using an online survey, we tested the relevance and consensus on multiple descriptions most frequently evoked during the interviews (N=51). The analysis of the rich corpus of verbalizations from the interviews yielded the main description strategies used by the experts, namely acoustic, metaphorical, and source-related. We also derived definitions for the attributes based on significantly relevant and consensual descriptions according to the survey results. Importantly, the definitions rely heavily on metaphorical descriptions. In sum, this study presents an overview of the shared meaning and perception of four metaphorical timbre attributes in the French language.

When designing sound evaluation experiments, researchers rely on listening test methods, such as rating scales (RS). In this work, we investigated the suitability of best-worst scaling (BWS) — a relative judgment method — for the perceptual evaluation of sound qualities. To do so, 20 participants rated the ‘brightness’ of a corpus of instrumental sounds (N=100) with RS and BWS methods. Our results show that BWS is equivalent to RS in terms of performance, participants’ impression, and duration. Interestingly, participants preferred the BWS over RS. Therefore, BWS is an alternative that reliably measure perceptual sound qualities and could be used in many-sounds paradigm.