What is timbre and can we measure it?

[MaxwellsEq]

Some poorly designed components of the electronic part of the domestic audio REproduction chain (HiFi) can add audible distortion and noise or change the frequency response of the signal. This is NOT timbre, which can only be ascribed to musical instruments and voice, which are part of the production chain.

Production tools such as vocoders, reverb, compressors / limiters, fuzz boxes, overdrive etc. can alter timbre because they are being deliberately used by the producers and musicians in the production chain.

Domestic REproduction (HiFi) loudspeakers that have standing waves, resonances and other distortions are merely corrupting the original source in a repeatable measure (i.e. they always resonate at 127.2 Hz). This is NOT timbre, because it is not coming from a musical instrument or voice. It is an imposition of resonance onto the original instrumental timbre and so MASKS timbre, corrupting the fine instrumental detail captured in the production chain.

HiFI components do not create timbre. If flawed, they corrupt and hide the timbre created by the musical instruments and voices captured in the production chain.

 

[Chr1]

With speakers purposefully desisigned to deviate from a flat frequency response, the term "voiced" is used. Reckon it can also be useful for anything else that is designed similarly, be it amplifiers, DACs or anything else.

 

[MaxwellsEq]

With speakers purposefully desisigned to deviate from a flat frequency response, the term "voiced" is used. Reckon it can also be useful for anything else that is designed similarly, be it amplifiers, DACs or anything else.

When designers "voice" speakers and electronics, they are effectively saying "we know what's best for you and will hide some of the captured timbre in order to give it to you."

 

[Jim Taylor]

I only mentioned cabinet resonance as one source of timbre-like defect, not the only one The dreaded cupped-hand resonance (several possible causes) is another common defect, one that is especially audible with human voices, heard as an alteration of timbre, sometimes described a nasal.

Perform in a few hundred venues and you start thinking about room acoustics in terms of timbre, too - boomy, dry, crisp, clangy, etc. After a while, even neutral starts to sound like a timbre.

Instruments typically consist of an exciter (reed, lips, bow, etc.) and a resonator (often complex). Put a musical instrument in a room and the instrument becomes the exciter and the room becomes the resonator - room excited by instrument: a new timbre. Move the instrument to another room and you create a new timbre. Timbre quite literally doesn't happen in a vacuum.

If I understand correctly what you're saying, I disagree. The contribution of the room can be dramatic, acoustically speaking, but even though it may have pronounced resonances, that contribution is not additive to the music being played ... it is subtractive.

Let's say you have a violinist and a cellist. If they play outside, you can most clearly hear their timbre. If you were to move them inside, into a resonant room, the room resonances would add to the sounds that HUMANS would hear, but they would not add anything to the sounds that the INSTRUMENTS create (the timbre). If anything, the room would interfere with the instruments, subtracting ever so slightly from their natural sound.

The new sound that you hear in the room is not timbre. It is room contribution, made up of resonance and decay, and can be electronically identified as such.

I simply can't see that echoic information as having any additive instrumental characteristics compared to the original signal recorded outside. That's what they would need to do to constructively change timbre. I may possibly see speaker resonances contributing in an additive manner, but not to any great degree, and certainly not on any well-designed loudspeaker. (See my comments below).

(I believe that the ability to hear changes that @MattHooper describes are consistent distortions, and are not to be described as changing native instrumental timbre.)

Would it not follow that the speaker resonances that we are discussing are, as regards timbre, also subtractive in nature? IOW, loudspeaker imperfections cannot influence our perceptions of timbre in a constructive manner ... only a destructive manner.
Not only that, but any contribution of the loudspeaker can be identified electronically, in the same manner that the room contributions mentioned above can be electronically identified.

Therefore it is my guess (and that's all it is - a guess) that all changes of timbre are subtractive, and not additive. And even though I cannot (yet) prove it, it is also my opinion that the human brain can differentiate between the contributions of instruments and the contributions of the room, and that the contributions of the room cannot be classified as changing timbre ... those contributions can only, at some point, "swamp" or interfere negatively with the sound of the instruments.

What's your opinion?

 

[ahofer]

If I understand correctly what you're saying, I disagree. The contribution of the room can be dramatic, acoustically speaking, but even though it may have pronounced resonances, that contribution is not additive to the music being played ... it is subtractive.

Let's say you have a violinist and a cellist. If they play outside, you can most clearly hear their timbre. If you were to move them inside, into a resonant room, the room resonances would add to the sounds that HUMANS would hear, but they would not add anything to the sounds that the INSTRUMENTS create (the timbre). If anything, the room would interfere with the instruments, subtracting ever so slightly from their natural sound.

The new sound that you hear in the room is not timbre. It is room contribution, made up of resonance and decay, and can be electronically identified as such.

I simply can't see that echoic information as having any additive instrumental characteristics compared to the original signal recorded outside. That's what they would need to do to constructively change timbre. I may possibly see speaker resonances contributing in an additive manner, but not to any great degree, and certainly not on any well-designed loudspeaker. (See my comments below).

(I believe that the ability to hear changes that @MattHooper describes are consistent distortions, and are not to be described as changing native instrumental timbre.)

Would it not follow that the speaker resonances that we are discussing are, as regards timbre, also subtractive in nature? IOW, loudspeaker imperfections cannot influence our perceptions of timbre in a constructive manner ... only a destructive manner.
Not only that, but any contribution of the loudspeaker can be identified electronically, in the same manner that the room contributions mentioned above can be electronically identified.

Therefore it is my guess (and that's all it is - a guess) that all changes of timbre are subtractive, and not additive. And even though I cannot (yet) prove it, it is also my opinion that the human brain can differentiate between the contributions of instruments and the contributions of the room, and that the contributions of the room cannot be classified as changing timbre ... those contributions can only, at some point, "swamp" or interfere negatively with the sound of the instruments.

What's your opinion?

We are entering the “circle of confusion”. Every live experience takes place in a space, and our experience of sound is affected by our surroundings. Perfect reproduction of the concert hall sound *at the speakers* will not result in perfect reproduction of same at the listening position in your living room. One’s subconscious expectations inside a smaller space will also be different. I’m always struck at all the hall sound we got with simple two-mic recordings of chamber music in a large, reverberant space, and how that sounded on our home system afterwards. It sounds authentic, obviously, sitting at the mic position, but then it almost drowns in room noise when you play back the recording.

But I agree that the speakers should not be altering/concealing/exaggerating the harmonic and dynamic profile of the signal, and the point of using DSP and equalization is of course to keep the playback room effects more consistent through the frequency range.

 

[tmtomh]

We’re also entering a semantic circle - whether speakers/gear “has” timbre or only “changes/distorts” timbre is a distinction that’s really about a deeper issue. It’s a conceptual question about the divide between performance, recording, and production on the one hand, and playback/reproduction on the other.

Simple as that.

 

[Titurel]

If I understand correctly what you're saying, I disagree. The contribution of the room can be dramatic, acoustically speaking, but even though it may have pronounced resonances, that contribution is not additive to the music being played ... it is subtractive.

Let's say you have a violinist and a cellist. If they play outside, you can most clearly hear their timbre. If you were to move them inside, into a resonant room, the room resonances would add to the sounds that HUMANS would hear, but they would not add anything to the sounds that the INSTRUMENTS create (the timbre). If anything, the room would interfere with the instruments, subtracting ever so slightly from their natural sound.

The new sound that you hear in the room is not timbre. It is room contribution, made up of resonance and decay, and can be electronically identified as such.

I simply can't see that echoic information as having any additive instrumental characteristics compared to the original signal recorded outside. That's what they would need to do to constructively change timbre. I may possibly see speaker resonances contributing in an additive manner, but not to any great degree, and certainly not on any well-designed loudspeaker. (See my comments below).

(I believe that the ability to hear changes that @MattHooper describes are consistent distortions, and are not to be described as changing native instrumental timbre.)

Would it not follow that the speaker resonances that we are discussing are, as regards timbre, also subtractive in nature? IOW, loudspeaker imperfections cannot influence our perceptions of timbre in a constructive manner ... only a destructive manner.
Not only that, but any contribution of the loudspeaker can be identified electronically, in the same manner that the room contributions mentioned above can be electronically identified.

Therefore it is my guess (and that's all it is - a guess) that all changes of timbre are subtractive, and not additive. And even though I cannot (yet) prove it, it is also my opinion that the human brain can differentiate between the contributions of instruments and the contributions of the room, and that the contributions of the room cannot be classified as changing timbre ... those contributions can only, at some point, "swamp" or interfere negatively with the sound of the instruments.

What's your opinion?

My opinion is that discussing the timbre of musical instruments is probably more complicated than we want to get into here. The equivalent circuit for a musical instrument would be hideously complicated. Our discussion in this forum a few months ago regarding piano tuning, barely scratched the surface. We can go there if you wish, but it might be a useful start for you to discover the physics of why a clarinet does not sound like an oboe and why a French oboe sounds different from a Viennese oboe. If you do that, I believe you will better understand my reluctance to remove the playback environment (and instrumentality) from timbre more generally.

 

[Mean & Green]

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?)

Yeah sure it’s ok to ask, no problem at all.

It’s more like a mental image, I mainly visualise spherical shapes and wavy lines in various colours. For me the most common colours are red, purple, blue, yellow, grey and white. It probably sounds very strange to someone who doesn’t experience it themselves. It’s completely involuntary, I have no control over it.

 

[Barrelhouse Solly]

Timbre mild oddity. At one time trumpets were mostly reserved for religious music in Europe. Double reed instruments often played parts that would would have been brass otherwise in secular music. Sometimes it's hard to distinguish between the double reed and brass timbre.

 

[Mean & Green]

I experienced this often, with the aid of various psychedelic drugs, in my youth. Not just visual effects, there also smell, taste, temperature and tactile effects connected with sound.

When describing the effects of synaesthesia to my wife for the first time, she thought it sounded pretty cool and said most people have to pay money and be intoxited in some form to have such an experience. I get it for free constantly

 

[Timcognito]

It's all pretty simple here's how works for guitars.

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Calculated-modes-of-vibration-and-natural-frequencies-of-the-soundboard-and-the-back-in_fig2_11323090

 

[Jim Taylor]

My opinion is that discussing the timbre of musical instruments is probably more complicated than we want to get into here. The equivalent circuit for a musical instrument would be hideously complicated. Our discussion in this forum a few months ago regarding piano tuning, barely scratched the surface. We can go there if you wish, but it might be a useful start for you to discover the physics of why a clarinet does not sound like an oboe and why a French oboe sounds different from a Viennese oboe. If you do that, I believe you will better understand my reluctance to remove the playback environment (and instrumentality) from timbre more generally.

That's confusing, since you said ...

... 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.

So you continue to refer to timbre, but you don't tell us what you believe the source of the timbre is if it's not the instruments themselves. Also, how do you identify timbre? Specifically, how do you tell which sound waves are timbre and which are not?
And again, what are the "components" to which you refer?

 

[kemmler3D]

We’re also entering a semantic circle - whether speakers/gear “has” timbre or only “changes/distorts” timbre is a distinction that’s really about a deeper issue. It’s a conceptual question about the divide between performance, recording, and production on the one hand, and playback/reproduction on the other.

Simple as that.

I think you're overcomplicating it. Timbre is only thought to apply to stereo equipment because writers in the space have misused the term for some time. The dictionary definition, and the definition used everywhere except the audiophile media-sphere, only applies to instruments and voice. Stereo systems don't have timbre because that's not what the word means, any more than a cello has a frequency response.

The concepts are similar, but not so similar people should actually be confused once it's explained to them.

 

[kemmler3D]

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.

Yes, but affecting timbre of something else is not the same thing as having one. I see what you're saying, I just think using the term that way should be avoided because:

1) the actual definition of the word only applies to instruments and voices,

2) we have plenty of correct terminology to use in audio to describe the sound of a stereo system, "tonality" is perfectly good most of the time

3) I think "timbre" is used in the audiophile reviewing arena disingenuously to imply stereo components have more of an effect on sound than they have (cable timbre strike anyone as an appropriate use of the term?) and a different type of effect on sound than they actually have.

So for reason #3 in particular, I think we should take a stand against the abuse of the word. People are getting confused on a conceptual, fundamental level about how audio equipment works.

In the case of cables especially, I don't think you can say "timbre". Timbre fundamentally has to do with producing harmonics, not just filtering them! I will die on this hill.

 

[egellings]

I’m pretty sure if we made a recording of two or three different instruments playing the same note individually and looked at the waveforms of each one they’d be different. So yes timbre will be measurable.

Other than variances in transducer accuracy, electronics should not be having any impact in reproducing timbre unless bad enough to have audible harmonic distortion. It would have to be really bad to make instruments unrecognisable.

Of course they would, or how else would we hear the difference the instruments' tone? Musical instruments provide the timbre, not the playback equipment, which merely reproduces what the musical instruments do. If playback equipment were to produce timbre, then I would call that distortion, not timbre.

 

[solderdude]

Transducers and EQ can change the timbre of instruments of reproduced music but does not have a timbre by itself.
The room itself also can influence the timbre by modification of frequency response, phase changes and reverb but we don't say a room has a timbre.

 

[ahofer]

I think it started with the idea that a system *reproduced* the timbre of instruments naturally. As I and others have remarked, strings can sound very unnatural on some systems (cough-showroom treble-cough) and the timbre just right on a system. Subjectively it feels like you hear the more subtle ‘woody’ qualities of a violin, or the materials of the instrument, or you might not, but it goes back to a perception of accuracy.

Then, I think, this fairly normal idea of true fidelity to live took off in all the verbal fluff of subjective reviews, first as a sort of metonymy, then, somehow, people began to think it was more than a rhetorical flourish to say the equipment itself had timbre.

 

[Mean & Green]

Of course they would, or how else would we hear the difference the instruments' tone? Musical instruments provide the timbre, not the playback equipment, which merely reproduces what the musical instruments do. If playback equipment were to produce timbre, then I would call that distortion, not timbre.

Pretty sure that’s what I said worded slightly differently.

 

[Jim Taylor]

Of course they would, or how else would we hear the difference the instruments' tone? Musical instruments provide the timbre, not the playback equipment, which merely reproduces what the musical instruments do. If playback equipment were to produce timbre, then I would call that distortion, not timbre.

I agree, and I suspect that is what @Titurel is labeling as "timbre". He seems to be using words differently than we do rather than using ideas differently than we do. However, until he clarifies further, I can't be certain. Quite confusing.

 

[egellings]

I agree, and I suspect that is what @Titurel is labeling as "timbre". He seems to be using words differently than we do rather than using ideas differently than we do. However, until he clarifies further, I can't be certain. Quite confusing.

A correct idea is forever trapped in its owner's mind if the owner can't put it into words properly.