Caractérisation du timbre des sons complexes.
I. Analyse multidimensionnelle

Abstract
Multidimensional scaling techniques are used to create a geometric representation of the mental organization of perceptual or conceptual relations. In this study they are used to explore the perceptual structure among different timbres ("timbre space"). The distance between any two timbres corresponds to their degree of perceptual dissimilarity. 98 listeners, musicians and nonmusicians of diverses nationalities, were asked to judge the degree of dissimilarity between all pairs of a set of 18 synthesized timbres equalized for pitch, loudness, and subjective duration. A multidimensional scaling analysis with the program CLASCAL revealed a space including three common dimensions shared by all the timbres as well as a set of weights that indicate the existence of perceptual features specific to certain timbres ("specificities"). Two of these dimensions seem to represent qualitatively the "brightness" and "attack quality" of the tones. Classes of listeners were determined by from the correlational structure of the raw dissimilarity matrices and weights are computed for each class. There was no systematic difference between the five classes associated with the musical training of the subjects.