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This listening test works best on Chrome, Edge, or Opera.

Safari, Firefox, and Internet Explorer are NOT supported.

Purpose

The purpose of this listening test is to perceptually evaluate musical orchestrations. You will be asked to listen to music sounds and rate perceptual aspects of these sounds.

Informed Consent

Please read the information below carefully before starting the test. You will find below an overview of the full version of the informed consent sheet, which can be downloaded here. After reading the informed consent information, click “START” to take part in the study. You must be aged 18 or older to participate in this study.

Voluntary Participation

Your participation is voluntary. Choosing not to participate will not disadvantage you in any way. You are free to withdraw at any time during the test and without giving a reason by closing the webpage. Any answers provided so far will NOT be saved if you choose to leave the test without submitting the results.

Risks

These experiments involve no foreseeable risks nor disadvantages to the participant. To avoid hearing-related health risks, you are asked to adjust the volume level of your device to a comfortable level before taking the test. All the sounds in this test were normalized to the same level. Follow the steps below to adjust the volume level of your device.

Volume level adjustment:

  • Lower your device's volume level to the minimum;
  • Click “PLAY” below;
  • Raise the volume of your device to a comfortable level;
  • Click “PLAY” again if the sound ends before you have finished adjusting the volume.

Anonymity and Confidentiality

Responses to this survey are anonymous and confidential. Answers will never be associated with the individual participants. The results from individual respondents will only be analysed in aggregate. None of the data collected will be used for commercial purposes.

Test Duration

The entire test will take approximately 15 minutes.

The Test

In this listening test, you are asked to rate the perceptual similarity between a reference sound and musical orchestrations created to approximate the reference.

Each musical orchestration typically comprises notes of several musical instruments played in unison. Each page contains 1 reference sound and 16 orchestrations. There are 7 pages in total. The orchestrations are presented randomly and are not ordered by any similarity measure.

Click “PLAY” to listen to the sounds, and “STOP” to stop playing the sounds. You can click “PLAY” while a sound is playing to automatically stop playing the current sound and start playing the next one. You can listen to each sound as many times as you want. To rate an orchestration, move the slider along the scale “VERY DISSIMILAR” and “VERY SIMILAR” to the position that corresponds to your rating. After you have rated all the orchestrations in the current page, click “NEXT” to go to the next page.

When you click “NEXT” in page 7, the following message pops up This was the last test. Do you want to finish? Click “OK” to go to the last page and submit the test results. The last page contains questions about your age and listening conditions. These questions are optional and you can choose to leave any or all of the fields empty. You will only submit your results if you click “SUBMIT”. At this point, you can choose NOT to submit your results by leaving the page.

Test Instructions:

  • Feel free to listen through the reference and all orchestrations before you do any ratings to get used to the material.
  • Rate the perceptual similarity of the orchestrations relative to the reference on top.
  • While rating the perceptual similarity, always listen to the reference sound before listening to each orchestration.
  • Rate the perceptual similarity using the beginning of the orchestrations (while all instruments are playing together). If you notice one or more sounds ending sooner than others, try to ignore the tail.
  • Try to rate the “overall” perceptual similarity of the orchestrations without focusing on single aspects.
  • Use the whole scale from Very dissimilar to Very similar.
  • Take the test in a quiet environment.
  • Use high-quality studio headphones and a good soundcard. Do not use low-quality equipment such as earphones or laptop loudspeakers.

Click “START” to voluntarily consent to take part in the test and advance to the first test page. By clicking “START” you acknowledge: I have read the information in the informed consent sheet and all my questions about the research have been satisfactorily answered. If you have questions or concerns about this experiment or the results, please contact us via email.



Thank you very much for your time. Your responses have been recorded.

We are sorry, but the following error occured during your submission:

Please submit the results to our server. You can also leave a comment.

Please download and save the results. You can also leave a comment.

Age:
How did you listen to the sounds? High-Quality Headphones Low-Quality Headphones Loudspeakers
Do you play any musical instrument (including singing)? Yes No
Are you a professional involved in audio processing (e.g. sound engineer, researcher in audio processing)? Yes No
Are you familiar with listening tests? Yes No
Are you familiar with musical orchestration? Yes No
Are you familiar with computer-aided musical orchestration methods? Yes No



Results should be sent to

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