Metering the Perceived Quality of Mixed Music
Research Student: Kirsten Hermes
Principal Supervisor: Dr Tim Brookes
Co-Supervisor: Dr Chris Hummersone
Supported by: EPSRC
Start date: 2013
End date: 2016
Project Outline
Mixing music is the process of combining tracks of recorded audio to an overall piece. This is a complicated process and, hence, automatic mixing or metering tools would be useful. The aim of the current research project was to work towards measuring the perceived quality of music mixes by establishing predictors for one important perceptual attribute of high- quality mixes (spectral clarity).
A review of academic and non-academic literature revealed that the high-level parameters that are responsible for determining the perceived quality of a music mix are ‘clarity and separation’, ‘balance’, ‘impact and interest’ and ‘freedom from technical faults’, alongside context-specific parameters. A further in-depth literature review established that clarity and separation—the chosen focus for this research—depend on spectral, spatial and temporal factors, and temporal changes in these factors. Spectral factors play an important role across all areas of literature consulted (namely timbral clarity, clarity in concert halls, masking, loudness, auditory scene analysis and speech intelligibility), and so the impact of mix EQ on spectral clarity was investigated in a series of experiments.
These experiments determined that two important factors contribute to the spectral clarity of single sounds. These are the harmonic centroid (spectral centroid divided by the sound’s average fundamental frequency) and timbral unpleasantness (related to sharp peaks in the frequency spectrum). For sounds modified by simple spectral filtering, these two factors are sufficient to model clarity changes with a Spearman correlation ranging from 0.631 (bass and vocal stimuli) to 0.848 (string stimuli). For sounds in a mix, however, other factors become important. Adding a peak audibility measure proved useful. This measure determined whether the audibility of peaks in the spectra of the target sounds was increased or decreased through EQ. Target and overall mix harmonic centroids and unpleasantness, combined with peak audibility, correlated positively with target spectral clarity (r=0.568).
Findings could contribute to the development of marketable products such as a piece of software able to judge the overall sound quality of a mix, automatic mixers or sonically improved music production software. Further work will allow a more comprehensive and generalizable model to be developed.
Publications
- Hermes, K. "Towards measuring music mix quality : the factors contributing to the spectral clarity of single sounds". Doctoral thesis, University of Surrey. 2017. Full Text
- Hermes, K., Brookes, T., Hummersone, C., “The harmonic centroid as a predictor of string instrument timbral clarity”, 140th Audio Engineering Society Convention, Paris, France, June 2016.
- Hermes, K., Brookes, T., Hummersone, C., “The influence of dumping bias on timbral clarity ratings”, 139th Audio Engineering Society Convention, New York, USA, November 2015.
- Hermes, K., Brookes, T., Hummersone, C., “The harmonic centroid as predictor of single sound spectral clarity”, G3 Futures: Galvanising the Guildford Games Industry, Guildford, UK, 1 July 2015 (poster presentation).
- Hermes, K., Brookes, T., Hummersone, C., “The harmonic centroid as predictor of single sound spectral clarity”, BBC Sound Now & Next Technology Fair, London, UK, 19—20 May 2015 (poster presentation).
Data Archive
The data on which the findings of this project are based are available in these repositories:
- Timbral Clarity Dumping Bias Dataset doi: 10.5281/zenodo.21341
- Single Sound Clarity (Strings) Dataset doi: 10.5281/zenodo.30599
- Single Sound Spectral Clarity Dataset doi: 10.5281/zenodo.192342