Perceptual similarity between piano notes: Simulations with a template-based perception model
This work addresses auditory perception modeling for researchers in acoustics and hearing science, but it is incremental as it builds on prior models and data.
The paper tackled the problem of simulating perceptual similarity between piano notes by developing a central processor attached to an existing auditory model, achieving moderate to high correlation with experimental data.
In this paper the auditory model developed by Dau et al. [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 102, 2892-2905 (1997)] was used to simulate the perceptual similarity between complex sounds. For this purpose, a central processor stage was developed and attached as a back-end module to the auditory model. As complex sounds, a set of recordings of one note played on seven different pianos was used, whose similarity has been recently measured by Osses et al. [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 146, 1024-1035 (2019)] using a 3-AFC discrimination task in noise. The auditory model has several processing stages that are to a greater or lesser extent inspired by physiological aspects of the human normal-hearing system. A set of configurable parameters in each stage affects directly the sound (internal) representations that are further processed in the developed central processor. Therefore, a comprehensive review of the model parameters is given, indicating the configuration we chose. This includes an in-depth description of the auditory adaptation stage, the adaptation loops. Simulations of the similarity task were compared with (1) existing experimental data, where they had a moderate to high correlation, and with (2) simulations using an alternative but similar background noise to that of the experiments, which were used to obtain further information about how the participants' responses were weighted as a function of frequency.