Abstract:

People make judgments of sound every day. Sound judgments, like judgments of any other entity, can vary in their generality (general--specific) and the importance of the judged characteristic (primary--secondary). The development of sound quality criteria systems and jury testing protocols requires knowledge of both the generality and importance of specific sound assessment criteria. Smith and Letowski [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 89, 1938 (1991)] reported intuitive generality and importance ratings of selected sound quality attributes measured on naive listeners and proposed a set of sound quality attribute definitions. The object of the present study was: (1) to determine whether listeners maintain their intuitive generality and importance ratings for selected sound quality attributes following exposure to the proposed definitions, and (2) to assess the effect of jury testing experience on the preservation of intuitive generality and importance ratings. The results support the notion that while some sound attributes have strong intuitive meaning (e.g., clarity), the others need clear definitions and experienced listeners (e.g., roughness) in order to be used successfully in sound quality studies. Some of the definitions tested in this study agreed well with the listeners' intuitive meaning of the defined attribute whereas others did not. [See NOISE-CON Proceedings for full paper.]