Estimation of Transient Characteristics in Nonpercussive Acoustic Instruments

Evangelista G, Acquilino A. Estimation of Transient Characteristics in Nonpercussive Acoustic Instruments. J Audio Eng Soc. 2026;74(10):750-761. doi:10.17743/jaes.2026.0304

@article{Evangelista2026_23443,
  author = {Evangelista, Gianpaolo and Acquilino, Alberto},
  title = {{Estimation of Transient Characteristics in Nonpercussive Acoustic Instruments}},
  journal = {Journal of the Audio Engineering Society},
  volume = {74},
  number = {10},
  pages = {750--761},
  year = {2026},
  month = oct,
  publisher = {Audio Engineering Society},
  doi = {10.17743/jaes.2026.0304},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.17743/jaes.2026.0304}
}

TY  - JOUR
TI  - Estimation of Transient Characteristics in Nonpercussive Acoustic Instruments
AU  - Evangelista, Gianpaolo
AU  - Acquilino, Alberto
T2  - Journal of the Audio Engineering Society
J2  - J. Audio Eng. Soc.
VL  - 74
IS  - 10
SP  - 750
EP  - 761
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/10/09
DO  - 10.17743/jaes.2026.0304
UR  - https://doi.org/10.17743/jaes.2026.0304
PB  - Audio Engineering Society
LA  - en
AB  - In this paper, methods are proposed for estimating characteristics of transients in musical instrument tones that provide objective indicators of the clarity of attack and also prove useful in the analysis of various articulations such as legato, tenuto, and tonguing. The methods used here rely on a preliminary separation of harmonic and noisy components achieved through an improved pitch-synchronous wavelet transform. The attack duration is estimated as the interval between note onset and the instant at which the envelope of the harmonic component reaches a fixed fraction of its maximum level. The method is robust to excitation noise and favorably compares with classical digital signal processing approaches. In addition to attack duration, the authors introduce the noise ducking time, defined as the time from note onset to the instant at which the resonant (harmonic) component dominates the noise component, based on a level comparison between their envelopes. Together with pitch stability, these descriptors provide objective indicators related to attack clarity and overall tone quality, relevant for self-guided practice of wind and bowed string instruments and for indexing databases of instrument sounds. Additionally, these methods are applied to the segmentation of legato and tenuto note sequences and to the evaluation of tonguing techniques.
ER  -