Towards a Perceptual Model Of ‘Punch’ In Musical Signals

This paper proposes a perceptual model for the measurement of ‘punch’ in musical signals. Punch is an attribute that is often used to characterize music or sound sources that convey a sense of dynamic power or weight to the listener. A methodology is explored that combines signal separation and low level parameter measurement to produce a perceptually weighted ‘punch’ score. The parameters explored are the onset time and frequency components of the signal across octave bands. The ‘punch’ score is determined a weighted sum of these parameters using coefficients derived through a large scale listening test. The model may have application in music information retrieval (MIR) and music production tools. The paper concludes by evaluating the perceptual model using commercially released music.