Editing Timbre (section)

==Psychoacoustic evidence==
Often, listeners can identify an instrument, even at different pitches and loudness, in different environments, and with different players. In the case of the [[clarinet]], acoustic analysis shows waveforms irregular enough to suggest three instruments rather than one. David Luce suggests that this implies that
: "[C]ertain strong regularities in the acoustic waveform of the above instruments must exist which are invariant with respect to the above variables".{{r|Luce1963_16}}

However, Robert Erickson argues that there are few regularities and they do not explain our "...powers of recognition and identification." He suggests borrowing the concept of [[subjective constancy]] from studies of vision and [[visual perception]].{{sfn|Erickson|1975|p=11}}

Psychoacoustic experiments from the 1960s onwards tried to elucidate the nature of timbre. One method involves playing pairs of sounds to listeners, then using a [[multidimensional scaling]] algorithm to aggregate their dissimilarity judgments into a timbre space. The most consistent outcomes from such experiments are that [[#Brightness|brightness]] or spectral energy distribution,{{r|Grey1977}} and the ''bite'', or rate and synchronicity{{r|Wessel1979}} and rise time,{{r|Lakatos2000}} of the attack are important factors.