Wow, what car is that?: Perception of exterior vehicle sound quality (original) (raw)
Related papers
Affective evaluations of and reactions to exterior and interior vehicle auditory quality
Journal of Sound and Vibration, 2002
Affective reactions to and evaluations of auditory stimuli are fundamental components of human perception. In three experiments, participants rated their affective reactions (how pleasant I feel) and preferences for these affective reactions (how much I like the way I feel) as well as affective evaluations (how pleasant the sound is) to interior and exterior binaurally recorded vehicle sounds varying in physical properties. Consistent with previous research, it was found that the orthogonal affect dimensions of valence (unpleasant–pleasant) and ...
Experience and information content affect interior vehicle sound quality assessments
International Journal of Vehicle Noise and Vibration, 2013
Recent research has found it useful to distinguish between the form and meaning of sounds. To investigate the relevance of meaning, naïve students and professional drivers listened to four levels of meaning neutralisation and four levels of spectral slope of recorded truck sound. Self-assessment of emotional reactions showed that professional drivers did not vary much in activation and rated over all lower activation than naïve participants whose affect ratings moved more or less along the annoyance correlation line in the upper left quadrant of the affect map. This gives some information about the importance of the source being recognisable and of previous user experience for product sound quality. It is further supported by that the overall difference between naïve participants' and professional drivers' ratings decreased with increasing meaning neutralisation. The methodology applied in the current study may be adopted to form homogenous panels of experts for sound evaluation.
2016
Electric and Hybrid Electric Vehicles [(H)EVs] are harder for pedestrians to hear when moving at speeds below 20 kph. Laws require (H)EVs to emit additional exterior sounds to alert pedestrians of the vehicles’ approach to prevent potential collisions. These sounds will also influence pedestrians’ impression of the vehicle brand. Current methods for evaluating (H)EV exterior sounds focus on “pedestrians’ safety” but overlook its influence on “vehicle brand”, and do not balance experimental control, correct context along with external and ecological validity. This research addresses the question: “How should (H)EV exterior sounds be evaluated?” The research proposes an experimental methodology for evaluating (H)EV exterior sounds that assesses pedestrians’ safety and influence on the vehicle brand by measuring a listener’s detection rate and sound quality evaluation of the (H)EV in a Virtual Environment (VE). This methodology was tested, improved and validated through three experimen...
Proceedings of the Human Factors Society Annual Meeting, 1992
The sensory environment of the vehicle is an area where customer expectations have greatly increased in recent years. For example, sound quality has become a very important factor in determining customer perception of vehicle quality and value. In this paper, a method for evaluating sound quality is presented and used in an engine design application. As part of the design of a future midsize vehicle, 14 engine component modifications were being considered as ways to improve sound quality. A subjective evaluation was carried out to determine if these modifications had any effect on perceived sound quality and, if so, which modifications provided the greatest sound quality benefit. A paired comparison method was used in which subjects judged, first, similarity and, then, preference. The similarity results showed that the vehicle sounds were indeed perceived quite differently. Additional analysis, using multidimensional scaling, revealed that most of these differences could be attribut...
2013
Electric vehicles are quiet at low speeds and thus potentially pose a threat to pedestrians' safety. Laws are formulating worldwide that mandate these vehicles emit sounds to alert the pedestrians of the vehicles' approach. It is necessary that these sounds promote a positive perception of the vehicle brand, and understanding their impact on soundscapes is also important. Detection time of the vehicle sounds is an important measure to assess pedestrians' safety. Emotional evaluation of these sounds influences assessment of the vehicle brand. Laboratory simulation is a new approach for evaluating exterior automotive sounds. This study describes the implementation of laboratory simulation to compare the detection time and emotional evaluation of artificial sounds for an electric vehicle. An Exterior Sound Simulator simulated audiovisual stimuli of an electric car passing a crossroad of a virtual town at 4.47 ms-1 (10 mph), from the perspective of a pedestrian standing at the crossroad. In this environment, 15 sounds were tested using experiments where participants detected the car and evaluated its sound using perceptual dimensions. Results show that these sounds vary significantly in their detection times and emotional evaluations, but crucially that traditional metrics like dB(A) do not always relate to the detection of these sounds. Detection time and emotional evaluation do not have significant correlation. Hence, sounds of a vehicle could be detected quickly, but may portray negative perceptions of the vehicle. Simulation provides a means to more fully evaluate potential electric vehicle sounds against the competing criteria.
Proceedings of the 9th …, 2008
This paper describes sound quality evaluations of five different automobiles. The primary purpose of the study was to compare sound quality evaluations made of interior vehicle noise during road tests with recordings of the noise of the vehicles played back to a jury of subjects using different playback methods. The experiment consisted of recording the sound fields inside the five cars with dual channel microphones situated in a dummy head. The study involved using a jury comprised of a large number of student subjects who first evaluated the sound quality of the five vehicles during the road tests, as well as later evaluating recordings of the same five vehicles played back through loudspeakers and headphones. It was found that there is a high correlation between the three different methods of evaluation used for the same vehicle. This study demonstrates that it is possible to evaluate the sound quality of a car in the laboratory with some confidence using the playback methods described in this paper. It also shows that laboratory evaluations, which are less expensive to conduct than road test evaluations, are good enough for manufacturers to determine the sound quality of a vehicle and to decide on the important sound quality factors needing improvement.
IPA - A Subjective Assessment Method of Sound Quality of Car Sound Systems
The paper describes a new subjective evaluation method of the acoustical quality produced by a sound system inside a car compartment. The method produces a single rating number, called IPA (Index of Performance Acoustic), defined as a weighted average of the subjective responses to a questionnaire, being compiled during listening tests conducted with the subject seating inside different cars. The paper describes the details of the subjective test, and focuses on the choice of questions in the questionnaire and of the weight to be employed. The principal innovation of the new method is the fact that the weights are changed according to the reliability of the subject (which is also inferred from the questionnaires), and thus the evaluation is very robust and almost immune from the inclusion in the panel of completely unreliable evaluators.
Measuring Sound Experience with In-Vehicle Speaker Systems
4th International Workshop on Perceptual Quality of Systems (PQS 2013), 2013
Measuring the perceived quality of speaker systems in the car together with potential users is important to evaluate new speaker developments. Existing sound perception questionnaires suffer from being difficult to answer for human beings because audio perceptions are, for the average user, hard to express in words. In this paper, we present a questionnaire that focuses on user experiences that drivers and passengers have with in-car speaker systems. It uses seven items each representing a dimension of car sound user experience. We describe the development of the questionnaire and a first study, which compares the experiences of two speaker systems. Our questionnaire showed a high reliability and enabled us to compare the level to which the speaker systems evoked positive experiences.
Subjective comparison of different car audio systems by the auralization technique
1997
This paper reports the results of a subjective evaluation experiment, based on the collection of questionnaires compiled by volunteers after listening to sound fields reconstructed by the auralization technique. Each synthetic sound field included both the car's interior noise and the transfer function of the sound system coupled with the passenger's compartment.
Electric Vehicle Sound-Expert User Perception
ASME-DETC2013, 2013
As electric vehicles are moving in on the automobile market, safety relating to acoustic perception is an important issue. It is a growing concern, particularly with respect to pedestrians, cyclists or visually impaired people. This can be addressed by adding sounds to the vehicle whilst at low speed. However, adding artificial sounds to an electric vehicle begs the question as to what kind of sound is appropriate. Appropriateness concerns technical specifications and is also linked to affective reactions of recipients of such a sound. Emotional reactions to 17 artificial exterior sounds for electric vehicles were investigated in an experimental setting with a total of 40 participants, 34 novice users and six sound experts.