Sound II Reading

1.4. Timbre

Timber,Tamber,Timbre

A reminder of Timbre:

Humans recognize timbre as entities, as signal objects having an overall quality. We recognize hundreds of human voices because we can remember their timbre. We remember the timbres of many musical instruments and their different timbres. The global quality of timbre is that it allows us to remember and recognize specific timbre as unique and identifiable objects.

Sufficient time is required for the mind to recognize and identify an object. For rather simple sounds, the time required for accurate perception is approximately 60 ms. As the complexity of the sound grows, the time needed to perceive the sound will also increase. All sounds lasting less than 50 ms are perceived as noise-like. The only exception is if the listener is well acquainted with the sound and timbre can be recognized from this small part.