Objective Measurement of Music Quality Using Inter-Band Relationship Analysis

This paper describes and evaluates an objective measurement that grades the quality of a complex musical signal. The authors have previously identified a potential correlation between inter-band dynamics and the subjective quality of produced music excerpts. This paper describes the previously presented Inter-Band Relationship (IBR) descriptor and extends this work by conducting more thorough testing with real-world music excerpts and a greater number of listening subjects. A high degree of correlation is observed between the Mean Subject Scores (MSS) and the objective IBR descriptor suggesting it could be used as an additional model output variable (MOV) to describe produced music quality. The method lends itself to real-time implementation and therefore can be exploited within mixing, mastering and monitoring tools.