Background Auditory alarms in medical environments are widely criticized due to
problematic design issues affecting learnability, recognition, and annoyance. To overcome
these issues, new alarm sets vary properties like pitch, timing, and timbre—the “quality” of a
sound. Past work identifies timbre as a promising candidate for improving alarm recognition,
however most studies manipulate multiple acoustic parameters, obfuscating the
independent effect of timbre on melodic perception. Methods To better understand timbre's …