Brightness is among the most studied aspects of music perception, and arguably among the most important timbral cues actively shaped by performers, composers, and audio engineers.

A large scale, online study of timbre semantics is being planned in which participants will be presented with sound stimuli and asked (a) to identify the sound source, (b) to rate it on a battery of semantic scales (e.g., warm, hollow), and (c) to list any additional semantic associations they wish to report.