Timbre Space

Figure 1: Overview of MDS process. Participants compare the sound events with each other (in pairs) to map their perceptual relations (distances) which are displayed in a perceptual dissimilarity matrix. The MDS program then creates a geometric configuration for the samples with respect to the dissimilarity ratings, using a lower number of dimensions. The obtained map is interpreted by the experimenter to find the best acoustic descriptors which correlate with the dimension axes [1]. 

Figure 2: Example of a timbre space [1].