Music technology and audio processing: rall. or accel. into the new millennium?

Abstract

Music acoustics research can provide support in terms of objective knowledge to further the rapidly developing areas of music technology and audio processing. This is illustrated by three examples taken from current projects at KTH. One concerns the improvement in quality of sound reproduction systems over the last century. A test, where expert listeners rated the year of recordings of different ages, demonstrated that significant advances were made between 1950 and 1970, while development was rather modest before and after this period. The second example investigates the secrets of timbral beauty. Acoustic analyses of recordings of an international opera tenor and a singer with an extremely unpleasant voice shed some light on the basic requirements of good vocal timbre. The unpleasant voice is found to suffer from pressed phonation, lack of a singer's formant, irregular vibrato and insufficient pitch accuracy. The third example elucidates tuning and phrasing differences between deadpan performances of MIDI files played on synthesizers and performances by musicians on real instruments. The examples suggest that future development in the areas of music technology and audio processing may gain considerably from a close interaction with music acoustics research.