Dr. Caroline Henderson did the following study at the University of Georgia School of Music, in 1994, for her doctorate in saxophone performance. Although she was not known to MIRI Corp. at the time of the study, we applaud her work, especially since it gives credible evidence that Fibracell® can match or surpass the tone quality of cane in a symphonic score.

Study Title and Scope

"A Comparative Study of Alto Saxophone Reeds through Spectral and Subjective Analyses"

The purpose of this (blind) study was to analyze six brands of cane reeds and five brands of synthetic reeds to determine the differences in tone quality produced by each. Spectral analysis was used to determine the individual reed which conformed most closely to the average profile of each brand. A panel of seven saxophonists then presented their opinions of each reed’s tone quality upon hearing a live performance of an excerpt from Eugene Bozza’s Aria for alto saxophone and piano performed on the reeds most representative of each brand. The evaluation form used by the judges included ten sets of bipolar adjectives: good-bad, harmonious-dissonant, clean-dirty, light-dark, pleasurable-painful, beautiful-ugly, strong-weak, complex-simple, masculine-feminine, and interesting-boring.

The following is a list of brand names tested: (Note that this is not in any order of placement in any of the tests, it is simply to recognize all the brands used in the study.)

A spectral analysis was used to visually display the strength of the harmonics for each brand of reed and to eliminate reeds that were not representative of the test’s best harmonic average for each brand of reed.

Ten test categories were used to evaluate the tonal quality of each reed. The top three reeds in some of the categories, in the order they were rated, are as follows:

Based on the subjective analyses, the Fibracell reed tested may be described as good, harmonious, clean, dark, pleasurable, beautiful, strong, interesting, complex, responsive and resonant.

Conclusion

The results indicated that the primary factors influencing the tone quality of a given reed were the strength of the overtones present regardless of their order and the dominance of either the fundamental or the first overtone. The reeds receiving the most positive evaluations were Glotin, Fibracell Synthetic, and Hemke.

This study gives credibility to what hundreds of professionals and students have known for the past few years, that Fibracell stands at the top in quality of tone with reeds made by the best cane reed manufacturers in the world; and this is only the beginning