1 The paradox of musical acoustics: Objectivzing the essentially subjective

Music Acoustics. The study of music acoustics may be considered the quintessential interdisciplinary musical science, requiring expertise in a number of areas, including but not limited to musical performance, psychoacoustics, and physics. Background in acoustics. Acoustics is the science that deals with the production, control, transmission, reception, and effects of sound. Sub disciplines include speech processing, room acoustics, environmental noise, vibration in vehicles, ground vibration, marine mammal communication, bioacoustics and musical acoustics. Sub disciplines of musical acoustics include music perception, physical modeling, music performance, and instrumental acoustics. One of the goals of instrumental acoustics is to define quality parameters enabling objective judgments of musical instruments. These quality parameters are largely dependent on subjective factors, however, and remain elusive. Background in music performance. Musical instruments evolved by trial-and-error, fulfilling developing needs of contemporary musicians. Instruments and musicians ' playing techniques developed a high level of sophistication long before they came under scientific scrutiny in the last century. Skilled musicians may be able to say immediately if they like an instrument without any idea of its physical function based on his or her traditions, habits, taste, and expressive vision. The complex and ethereal judgement factors of musicians make it therefore difficult to obtain unified quality judgements to correlate with objectively measurable acoustical data