The Effects of MP3 Compression on the Emotional Characteristics of Musical Instruments

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Department of Computer Science and Engineering

Final Year Thesis Oral Presentation

Title: "The Effects of MP3 Compression on the Emotional Characteristics of 
Musical Instruments"

By

Ga Lam CHOI

Abstract

Previous research has shown that musical instrument sounds have strong 
emotional characteristics. Other research has shown that MP3 compression 
can change the timbre of musical instruments. This paper investigates the 
effect of MP3 compression on music emotion. We conducted listening tests to 
compare the effect of MP3 compression on the emotional characteristics of 
eight sustained instrument sounds compared pairwise. We compared these 
sounds over ten emotional categories. The results show that MP3 compression 
strengthened the emotional categories Sad, Scary, Shy, and Mysterious, and 
weakened Happy, Heroic, Comic, Romantic, and Calm. Interestingly, Angry was 
relatively unaffected by MP3 compression.

Date:                   Monday, 4 May 2015

Time:                   2:20 - 3:00pm

Venue:                  Room 5560
                        Lifts 25/26

Committee Members:      Prof. Andrew Horner (Supervisor)
                        Prof. Fangzhen Lin (Reader)