Perceptual wavetable matching for synthesis of musical instrument tones

Recent parameter matching methods for multiple wavetable synthesis have use d a simple relative spectral error formula to measure how accurately the sy nthetic spectrum matches an original spectrum. It is supposed that the smal ler the spectral error, the better the match, but this is not always true. A modified error formula is described, which takes into account the masking characteristics of our auditory system, as an improved measure of the perc eived quality of the matched spectrum. Selected instrument tones have been matched using both error formulas and resynthesized. Listening test results show that wavetable matching using the perceptual error formula slightly o utperforms ordinary matching, especially for instrument tones that have sev eral masked partials.