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What is timbre and can we measure it?

Very perceptive!

I’ve wondered about the role of synaesthesia and I brought that issue up here before.

I remember doing a thread on it.

One reason being that I tend to associate colours with sound, and also that more broadly speaking you often see many audio files associating colours with sound.
For instance, there’s something of a trope among some tube fans of associating old Conrad Johnson tube amplifiers as having something of a “ golden” or “ bronze” like tonality or timber. My point and bring that up isn’t to say that it’s true or justifiable. Only that, for whatever reason, i’ve seen many audiophiles adducing certain colours sometimes and trying to describe how they are perceiving something.

When I play my acoustic guitar And I’m closing my eyes I get a sensation of the “ Woody warmth” of the resonating body, and a sort of sparkly golden tonality to the metal strings. I don’t know why, but that’s how those sounds show up in my brain. And when hear a recording of my guitar or similar acoustic guitars through a loudspeaker and it does not ignite those colours in my brain - maybe something more like silver or black-and-white - it feels kind of wrong, like a photograph of my mother’s face where the colour has been green, shifted or something.
As long as I get the right tonal colours occurring in my mind in front of a Soundsystem, then I’m happy and I can enjoy that system for hours on end. I can’t seem to just force this by will, changing the colours I perceive. I’ve owned some loudspeakers that were essentially my dream loudspeakers and terms of aesthetics and what I wanted to work in my system. But they sounded “tmbrally off” and it didn’t matter how many months I tried to stick with those speakers, hoping I would adjust, it never changed. They still produced the same different different timbre/colours in my perception.
So I would sadly sell them.

This is of course, not something I propose objective or translatable to everyone else.

However I HAVE found that when another audiophile or reviewer seems to be describing sound in ways similar to how I hear it, and not similar types of timber colorations as he or she perceives it, then it’s often the case when I hear the same loudspeakers, they seem to be doing the same thing for my perception. Likewise, on other forms when I describe the sound of different speakers, I get some audiophiles saying “ I hear exactly the same things you did with those speakers, you describing the exact impressions they invoked in my perception.” And in those cases, sometimes they have gone on to buy loudspeakers they heard me describe, and I’ve been very happy that they experience the same thing I did.

I don’t know what to make of all that. of course it could be any number of biases going on that happened to be merging or influencing one another. But I still find it interesting. For instance even my perception at my old Conrad Johnson tube amplifiers place a slight upper mid range, lower trouble “ glow” on the sound that seems to be sort of gold and yellow in my mind, has been a very consistent perception, not having faded in the over 20 years I’ve used the amplifiers.

But back to synaesthesia.

From what I’ve read about the phenomenon, I don’t think I have synaesthesia proper. It doesn’t seem to be as overriding and pronounced as what I read about it.

But it’s my hunch that this comes in a range, maybe like autism, and that’s why even people not diagnosed with it may talk in terms of timbral colours. Possibly I am a bit more on the “ spectrum” towards synaesthesia but I wouldn’t know.

I wonder how many other people here have any colours evoked when listening to music and whether it seems reliable.
The reason I asked is because your descriptions of tonal colours resonated with me. I do have synesthesia to the extent that when listening to music I perceive shapes and colours depending on the sound.

Differences in perceived sound quality definitely affects the shapes and colours in my mind. Trying to explain the condition to people who don’t experience it I find is very difficult. When I was young I just assumed everyone else was the same as me, it took a while until I realised I’m part of a minority.

Thanks for sharing!

 
The reason I asked is because your descriptions of tonal colours resonated with me. I do have synesthesia to the extent that when listening to music I perceive shapes and colours depending on the sound.

Differences in perceived sound quality definitely affects the shapes and colours in my mind. Trying to explain the condition to people who don’t experience it I find is very difficult. When I was young I just assumed everyone else was the same as me, it took a while until I realised I’m part of a minority.

Thanks for sharing!

I hope it's OK to ask, I have always wondered. When music evokes shapes / colors for you, do you literally see them in the sense of a visual hallucination (i.e. with eyes open, colors and shapes clearly appear) or is it more like having a distinct mental image of something? (like when I, a non-synesthetic person, might visualize a red firetruck?)
 
Matt do you have synesthesia by any chance?
Our younger granddaughter takes voice lessons. Her teacher has synesthesia. He sees music. He's also a good vocal coach. She has learned a lot from him about tone production, dynamics, etc.
 
You can listen to 10 different Tenor Sax players and each will have a different tonal color. Some will call that timbre.

You can take any one of those sax players and listen to a recording of them through 10 different sound systems and each one will likely sound a little different as well. Some will call that Timbre. Some will call it imperfections in the equipment/drivers.

While some may refer to variations in sound quality through different systems as "imperfections," it's essential to recognize that these differences are part of what makes listening to music a rich experience. Each system has its own character, which can enhance or detract from the original timbre of the performance.
 
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First, what is timbre? Or maybe I should say what causes timbre?

Timbre is which harmonics of the fundamental and at what level they sound.

Consider the sound of blowing across the top of a beer bottle:

It is nearly a sine, devoid of harmonic content.

330ml Grolsch Beer Bottle. Just a hint of second and sixth harmonics, a very smooth tone.

1736391400615.png


(there's a fair amount of "noise" in the above, from the blowing part near the microphone)


An Electric Bass Buitar note, just the electrical signal.

Loads of harmonic content here:

1736391528803.png



When you say A E I O U, you are producng a different harmonic series, even if you say each letter with the same fundamental pitch.

That. in my book, is a brief explanation of Timbre.

Can you measure it? It is measured above, to some degree.
 
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Our younger granddaughter takes voice lessons. Her teacher has synesthesia. He sees music. He's also a good vocal coach. She has learned a lot from him about tone production, dynamics, etc.

I wonder how reliable and repeatable synesthesia actually is.

For instance, whether the colours that come to mind when somebody is listening under sided conditions also reliably occur blinded conditions.

In principle, it seems to me that if synesthesia was a reliable subjective experience based on an objective stimulus, Then there would be a match between what people discern under both sided and blinded conditions.

Or maybe it’s a phenomenon that’s influenced as much by bias as anything else?

I wonder if tests have been done in this regard.

In my own case, it was as I said my experience of something like synesthesia they got me too test different loudspeakers in live versus reproduced comparisons (and other words, if I was playing a recording of my acoustic guitar through different loudspeakers, and one loudspeaker evoked the “ proper” timbral colours in my mind, was that because it was actually or accurately reproducing the sound of my guitar?
That’s why I did tests comparing the real guitar playing with the recording of the guitar through a number of different speakers (and also used to use those recordings when auditioning speakers later on).

It turned out in my informal tests that the phenomenon was consistent - the speakers that on their own has sounded more timbrally correct to my ears where the ones that held up best in comparison to the real instrument being played.

But because this wasn’t blinded, it doesn’t untangle what’s going on there. Maybe it had nothing to do with my detecting accuracy, but just some consistency in a bias effect.

But this is also part of what motivated me to do my blinded comparison of my Conrad Johnson tube pre-amplifier versus my benchmark LA4 preamplifier. Since I ran, my CJ pre-amplifier through my benchmark, under regular sided listening conditions with a click of a button I could switch between the CJ and the benchmark preamplifier, and among my impressions was the consistent perception of a more “ yellow golden tone” to the CJ presentation. And I wondered if that among other things held up under blinded conditions.

It turned out it did. I was able to easily distinguish between the pre-amplifiers, and one of the obvious tells seem to be that “ golden tone” from the CJ preamp.

Not presented as scientific evidence. Nobody can get into my head as to what I was experiencing. I can only report it as I experienced it.
 
I wonder how reliable and repeatable synesthesia actually is.

For instance, whether the colours that come to mind when somebody is listening under sided conditions also reliably occur blinded conditions.

In principle, it seems to me that if synesthesia was a reliable subjective experience based on an objective stimulus, Then there would be a match between what people discern under both sided and blinded conditions.

Or maybe it’s a phenomenon that’s influenced as much by bias as anything else?

I wonder if tests have been done in this regard.

In my own case, it was as I said my experience of something like synesthesia they got me too test different loudspeakers in live versus reproduced comparisons (and other words, if I was playing a recording of my acoustic guitar through different loudspeakers, and one loudspeaker evoked the “ proper” timbral colours in my mind, was that because it was actually or accurately reproducing the sound of my guitar?
That’s why I did tests comparing the real guitar playing with the recording of the guitar through a number of different speakers (and also used to use those recordings when auditioning speakers later on).

It turned out in my informal tests that the phenomenon was consistent - the speakers that on their own has sounded more timbrally correct to my ears where the ones that held up best in comparison to the real instrument being played.

But because this wasn’t blinded, it doesn’t untangle what’s going on there. Maybe it had nothing to do with my detecting accuracy, but just some consistency in a bias effect.

But this is also part of what motivated me to do my blinded comparison of my Conrad Johnson tube pre-amplifier versus my benchmark LA4 preamplifier. Since I ran, my CJ pre-amplifier through my benchmark, under regular sided listening conditions with a click of a button I could switch between the CJ and the benchmark preamplifier, and among my impressions was the consistent perception of a more “ yellow golden tone” to the CJ presentation. And I wondered if that among other things held up under blinded conditions.

It turned out it did. I was able to easily distinguish between the pre-amplifiers, and one of the obvious tells seem to be that “ golden tone” from the CJ preamp.

Not presented as scientific evidence. Nobody can get into my head as to what I was experiencing. I can only report it as I experienced it.

Influence of Context and Bias
The context in which stimuli are presented can significantly affect synesthetic experiences. For example, studies have shown that synesthetes perform better in recognizing stimuli when not subjected to flash suppression—a condition where visual stimuli are hidden by competing images—compared to controls. However, when flash suppression is applied, no significant advantage was observed for synesthetes over non-synesthetes. This indicates that while synesthetic perceptions can enhance recognition under certain conditions, they do not necessarily provide a consistent advantage in all contexts.

It would be fun if the phenomenon was a super power that was always as consistent as scientific measurements but studies show that's not always the case.

 
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To me the use of the term timbre to describe the sonic characteristics of a speaker or a stereo system comes from an audiophile tradition that I don't have much interest in: it seeks to endow audible coloration with the quality of "musicality," which can then be compared with the "musicality" of a different-sounding system.

To be clear, I'm fine with describing speakers as bright, warm, lean, and so on if their measured response has characteristics consistent with that.

But to me timbre is simply something a system should reproduce as accurately as possible, which in the case of instruments whose timbre we are familiar with means as convincingly as possible. If the timbre of instruments sounds "off" then there's some kind of nonlinearity in the speakers' (or other gear's) performance. Reproduction gear doesn't have timbre - it only reproduces it, however well or poorly.
 
Timbre is not a domestic sound REproduction aspect at all. No HiFi equipment exhibits timbre.

Timbre is exclusively the function of a musical instrument when creating sound. All musical instruments have timbre and it's usually a feature of construction (less so with electronic keyboards etc.). It's characterized by a combination of harmonics and ADSR envelope (Attack, Decay, Sustain Release).

Transparent domestic REproduction equipment reproduces all audible harmonics and the full complexity of ADSR where these are captured in the recording.

Domestic REproduction components are NOT musical instruments and should not create timbre nor change the timbre of recorded musical instruments.

Ideally, that's absolutely true. BUT, to the extent that components are imperfectly controlled in the domains you list, they will exhibit a characteristic timbre, just like musical instruments. Which explains the common use of terms typically applied to musical sounds to label deficits in the reproduction chain - honky, woody, reedy, etc. We may not want timbre in our Hi-Fi equipment, but it's inevitable that will have some - hopefully very little.
 
Ideally, that's absolutely true. BUT, to the extent that components are imperfectly controlled in the domains you list, they will exhibit a characteristic timbre, just like musical instruments. Which explains the common use of terms typically applied to musical sounds to label deficits in the reproduction chain - honky, woody, reedy, etc. We may not want timbre in our Hi-Fi equipment, but it's inevitable that will have some - hopefully very little.

I take your point, but given the multiple sonic aspects of timbre as outlined by other members in prior comments above, I'm skeptical that the nonlinearities of hi-fi reproduction equipment should actually be called timbre.
 
Another term that equals "Timbre" is "tone color". It usually doesn't apply to differences in tonal qualities within a single instrument, though it can, but larger differences, like the tone color of a guitar vs. a lute or mandolin, a clarinet vs. basset horn, a harpsichord vs. a fortepiano or electric vs. acoustic guitar. Some will break down timbral differences on a finer scale, but that sort of differentiation is mainly subjective. Timbre is a rather loose term best understood as the differences between different instruments. One can speak of different singers within the same vocal range as having different "timbres", as if they are different instruments like different sopranos or altos, Mara Callas vs. Renata Tebaldi or Kathleen Ferrier vs. Maureen Forrester. And one can speak of the different timbres of different soloists on the same instrument, like John Coltrane vs. Ben Webster (both on tenor sax) as the tenor sax has a wide variety of potential tone colors. Some use the term referring to audio gear, but that is not on the same footing as using "timbre" as a purely musical term. As regards audio gear, if the tone color is different enough as to be noticed, than it's "colored", which is not a good thing as that suggests the imposition of a coloration on the tone colors produced by the musicians and their instruments.
 
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Ideally, that's absolutely true. BUT, to the extent that components are imperfectly controlled in the domains you list, they will exhibit a characteristic timbre, just like musical instruments. Which explains the common use of terms typically applied to musical sounds to label deficits in the reproduction chain - honky, woody, reedy, etc. We may not want timbre in our Hi-Fi equipment, but it's inevitable that will have some - hopefully very little.

Please explain how the electronic portion of the reproduction chain can contribute timbre.

Even if the electronics are tube-based and designed to deliberately have a "boutique" sound, I cannot understand how they would contribute timbre. After all, wouldn't timbre change for every different reproduced instrument? Yet the particular and unique characteristics (distortions) of boutique tube designs are consistent and unchanging.

This "imperfect control" you mention would, as far as I can see, apply only to speaker systems, which would resonate differently with various recordings containing powerful content in different portions of the frequency spectrum.

I can understand that solid-state electronics might be designed to produce the same non-linear response, but I don't know of any.
 
they will exhibit a characteristic timbre, just like musical instruments.
Leaving aside the gentle and nuanced discussion in this thread thus far... the dictionary definition of timbre only applies to voices and musical instruments.

You can call the distortions introduced by speakers or lo-fi electronics "timbre", (incorrectly), but unless your speakers are literally falling apart, it is not much like musical instruments at all.
 
I didn't, though I guess microphonic tubes might.
If "timbre" is what the voices and instruments are providing, then the imposition of tone color from the audio gear subtracts from the musical timbre.
 
Timbre is formed by the relative amplitudes and phases, and the relative decay characteristics, of the fundamental and its various harmonics. A half hour playing with an additive synthesizer will steer you in the right direction.
 
I didn't,

Okay ... I thought that you had, since you used the word "components" (plural).
Is it then safe for us to assume that the only portion of the reproduction chain that can perhaps contribute a change of timbre is the loudspeaker? (If I remember correctly, acoustic feedback through a cartridge won't do it.)
By this post, I am not yet willing to agree that speaker resonance can cause an effect that listeners will identify with a change in timbre ... at least not consistently. (Changing output levels and varying spectral content seem to prevent that.)
 
The electronic portion of the chain is not the issue it's the construction of the actual speaker in the case of horned speakers. Some speakers ADD timbre
to a piece of music. Some like the effect, and some complain of added color or the lack of transparency, through the reproduction process.

Even the type of string construction changes "timbre" in a classical guitar, yet they are tuned/tone perfect according to measuring one string type against the other.
Same with the type of pick used. There are MANY things that can be measured but are ignored. Most musicians could care less if you could measure them
or not. Thus the difference between the average garage band and players like Al Di Meola or Carlos Santana.

I've seen them play side by side in a great Amphitheater. The term "Timbre" is a term that comes to mind between the two.

Very interesting subject.
 
You can call the distortions introduced by speakers or lo-fi electronics "timbre", (incorrectly), but unless your speakers are literally falling apart, it is not much like musical instruments at all.

I don’t know about that.

Obviously speakers don’t make sound on their own just standing there. if a loudspeaker has any character, you only hear it when you start playing music (or, yes things like white noise but mostly we listen to music).

Timber is shaped by the harmonic content and relative balance of frequencies, so if you’re introduced any non-linearity in the speaker, it’s going to affect the timber of instruments or voices being played through that speaker. It’s possible for a speaker to have enough colouration to overlay those non-linearities across a wide swath of music, and this could produce for the listener what they perceive as a common “ voice” or “ timber” to the sound.

That’s how I tend to hear things. I find with many or most sound systems that, of course there are distinct timbers between instruments, but also a sort of overall timber overlaid on everything. Sort of like how you could be viewing a photograph of an orchestra with all the instruments that has been lightly spritzed with a spray of white paint, creating a very light scrim over the image. You can still see the different instruments and even see enough colour differentiation among the instruments, but there is still on all of them slightly homogenizing “ white mist” - and maybe another photograph has a mist of paint that might be more purple or whatever.

I’m not really trying to convince anybody to use the term timber for audio gear if they don’t want to, because I understand why some want to reserve that for things like musical instruments. I’m just including how I perceive things.
 
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Please explain how the electronic portion of the reproduction chain can contribute timbre.

Even if the electronics are tube-based and designed to deliberately have a "boutique" sound, I cannot understand how they would contribute timbre. After all, wouldn't timbre change for every different reproduced instrument? Yet the particular and unique characteristics (distortions) of boutique tube designs are consistent and unchanging.

This "imperfect control" you mention would, as far as I can see, apply only to speaker systems, which would resonate differently with various recordings containing powerful content in different portions of the frequency spectrum.

I can understand that solid-state electronics might be designed to produce the same non-linear response, but I don't know of any.

See my reply to kemmler3D.

I perceive my tube amplifiers as adding a texture and general “golden timbre” to my system.

I’m comfortable describing it that way, though I understand why many are not.
 
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