Discrimination of Instrument Tones Resynthesized with Piecewise-Linear Approximated Harmonic Amplitude Envelopes

Harmonic amplitude envelopes of instrument tones were approximated using piecewise‐linear segments to investigate how the discrimination of approximated sounds varies with the number of breakpoints and instruments. Listening tests were done to determine the discrimination of the approximated sounds from the originals. Apart from basic statistical analysis, various error measurements were evaluated based on the results of the listening tests. Relative‐amplitude critical band error was the best error metric, accounting for about 82% of the discrimination variance. Strong correlations were found between the discrimination scores and spectral incoherence, with breath noise in the flute and bow noise in the violin particularly discriminable in piecewise‐linear approximation.