A psychoacoustic annoyance concept for application in sound quality

Industry engineers have to deal with the customer raising demands for acoustic comfort. At present, in the case of the judgment of sounds, manufacturers and customers go different ways. In the development labs noise is analyzed mainly by means of physical parameters. However, the customer judges a noise by means of human sense of hearing. These views can result in different assessments for the same sound. Therefore, objective quantities describing the different attributes of a sound in line with the human hearing system are necessary. In this study a psychoacoustic attempt is introduced aiming at a procedure for an objectively measurable psychoacoustic annoyance. The first results of a pilot study with synthetic noises with different loudness, sharpness, fluctuation strength, and roughness are presented, showing which psychoacoustic hearing sensations are related to the psychoacoustic annoyance evaluation of subjects. It is shown how the psychoacoustic annoyance evaluation changes if variations of more than one hearing sensation occur at the same time. A model summarizing the results for psychoacoustic annoyance is presented. General guidelines for application of the results for the development of consumer product sound is also presented. [See NOISE-CON Proceedings for full paper.]