Perception-based control of vibrato parameters in string instrument synthesis

Perceptual knowledge provides a tool for making sound synthesis more efficient. Also for the parametric representations of sound, it is necessary to understand the perception of individual features. This paper reports four listening experiments exploring the perception of vibrato, aiming at guidelines for the control of vibrato parameters in string instrument synthesis. The results suggest that accurate control of the vibrato rate is much more important than control of vibrato extent. JND’s for vibrato rate were found to be around 6 %, while for the extent the perceptual tolerances were much wider. Additional experiments on the perception of pitch and musical consonance of vibrato tones did not support the importance of vibrato extent either.