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This research aims to challenge the belief that the spectrum of a sound fully accounts for timbre or sound quality.

The sound of a sinusoid: Spectral models

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This research aims to challenge the belief that the spectrum of a sound fully accounts for timbre or sound quality.
Listeners were presented with pairs of damped and ramped sinusoids.
Damped sinusoids were created by repeating segments of a sinusoid with exponential decay, while ramped sinusoids were time-reversed versions.
Auditory spectra were assessed using a gammatone auditory filterbank to compare spectral peaks.
Listeners consistently identified ramped sinusoids as having a stronger sinusoidal quality.
The spectral peak of the damped sinusoid is narrower than that of the ramped sinusoid for half-lives between 2-16 ms.
Fourier energy spectra of both damped and ramped sinusoids with the same half-life are identical.

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Experimental study reveals listeners prefer ramped sinusoids for sinusoidal quality despite spectral similarities.

Roy D. Patterson (1994) studied this question.

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