Timbre Solfege and auditory profile analysis

A course in auditory evaluation of sound, called Timbre Solfege, was developed by a team of researchers headed by Professor Andrzej Rakowski, at the Music Acoustics Laboratory, Chopin University of Music. A large part of the course, taught at the Department of Sound Engineering, has been focused on the detection and identification of timbre changes produced by formants and by other kind of sound spectrum modifications. Detecting formants in sound recordings is an auditory task that has much in common with auditory profile analysis, an area of research initiated and developed in psychoacoustics by Professor David M. Green, exploring the fundamentals of detection of changes in the sound spectrum envelope shape, independently of the differences in loudness between the sounds. The purpose of this study is an attempt to relate the results of the Timbre Solfege sound evaluation drills to the theory of the auditory profile analysis.