Pitch and loudness are subjective aspects of sound which can be described
in terms of the observed abilities of subjects to rate them on a scale from
‘low’ to ‘high’. Timbre is a subjective aspect of
sound for which there is no such scale and neither qualitative nor
quantitative descriptions are generally found that are widely accepted. The
purpose of this paper is to shed light on some frequency domain aspects of
the nature of timbre by making use of the results obtained from an analysis
system which is designed to take advantage of contemporary psychoacoustical
knowledge relating to human peripheral hearing. Results are presented which
illustrate the relationship between contemporary psychoacoustic ideas
relating to timbre and ideas first discussed by Helmholtz and later taken
up by other researchers. Analyses by the system of a selection of sounds
from acoustic musical instruments with clear timbral differences are also
presented in order to place these discussions in a musical context.