Door sound and image of cars

The quality of a car frequently is inconsciously rated on the basis of the sound produced by closing a door. If the sound is “tinny”, the connotation is that the whole vehicle is cheap and not solid. On the contrary, a full saturated sound of the closing of a car’s door has

Environmental noise assessment: psychophysical background

In this paper, some aspects of the psychophysical background of environmental noise assessment are touched. Psychophysical methods useful for the measurement of environmental noise are mentioned. The simulation of the loudness perception for normal hearing and hearing impaired persons is illustrated. Moreover, the influence of the meaning of sound as well as of additional modalities on noise assessment is discussed. 1

INFLUENCES OF COLOR ON THE LOUDNESS JUDGEMENT PACS: 43.66.Cb, 43.66.Lj

In this study, the influence of an additionally presented optical component on the auditory judgement of loudness was investigated. Particularly, the impact of different colors of trains on the loudness judgement was focused. Two train passings of ICEs served as acoustical stimuli. As optical stimuli there were available in addition to the alternative 'classical laboratory-situation ' (which means no additional optical component) and the original appearance of the ICE (white with one red stripe) three more colorings (red, green and blue) which were realized by digital image editing. At same acoustic stimulus, the color of an ICE train can influence the loudness rating in such way that red trains may be judged as being louder than green trains

Audio-visual interactions in loudness evaluation

In psychophysical experiments, the influence of the presentation of visual stimuli on the loudness evaluation of sounds from traffic noise has been investigated. In a first experiment it was shown that the colour of the visual stimulus can influence loudness evaluation in such a way that – for same acoustic stimulus – the loudness of a red train can be rated 15 % higher than the loudness of a green train. The following set of experiments was devided into two groups: on the one hand, visual stimuli from still pictures and on the other hand visual stimuli from moving pictures. As subgroups of the still pictures either pictures not related to the sounds or pictures fitting the sounds were presented. An example for the first subgroup would be the sound of a train passby plus a picture of a tree, and for the second subgroup the sound of a train plus the picture of a train. As concerns the moving pictures, also two subgroups of stimuli were studied: in one case, the video was taken from a fixed position, and in the other case from a moving position such as in a driving car. Moreoever, the presentation was either in a sound proof booth for psychoacoustic experiments via headphones and a head mounted display or in a simple car simulator. The magnitude of the influences of the rather different types of audio-visual interactions on loudness evaluation of sounds from traffic noise generally increases for more “realistic ” situations: relatively large loudness reductions (8 %) are found, when moving pictures taken during a car ride are presented in a car simulator. 1

Subjective selection of nonindividual head-related transfer functions

The individualization of head-related transfer functions (HRTFs) for virtual acoustics is a key technique for the optimization of the directional reproduction. This paper presents a subjective selection method for a fast, individual selection of one HRTF from a catalogue of non-individual ones. The selection method gives random access to sounds filtered with the HRTFs. In a first selection step a group of HRTFs is chosen out of which a final HRTF is singled out in a second step according to multiple criteria. The results of the two selection-steps were evaluated through a localization experiment. It is found that the selection minimizes the variance of the localization responses and the number of inside-the-head localizations. Localization error as well as the number of front-back confusions is small. As the selection method is fast, easy to implement, and operable for subjects without training, it is suitable for various applications, such as telephone conference systems or computer games. 1

Data-Intensive Intra- & Internet Applications - Experiences Using JAVA

Intra/Internet technology has become a key issue in the development of modern systems. Nowadays it is not sufficient anymore to present static information sheets through the WWW, instead we need interactive applications that may even compute complex results or process large data sets. In this paper we describe a prototype based on Java and CORBA. Both represent modern concepts that have been developed to fulfill these requirements. Their combination results into the kind of data processing we want to apply to the WWW: First, portable, powerful, structured and even reusable client programs instead of cryptic HTML scripts, second, well defined interfaces, and third, efficient server processes separated from the WWW server and its CGI extensions. Communication is controlled by a fault tolerant CORBA layer, which also enables server development using a different language than Java. Besides a discussion of CORBA and its data shipping capabilities, we take a closer look at Java and its runtime behavior, and we report on the experiences gathered with our prototype system and its testbed application. This system has also been used to gather experiences with and to influence the new language binding of the Standard Data Access Interface (SDAI) of the Standard for the Exchange of Product Data (STEP, ISO 10303) to Java. 1

Combining Relational And Full-Text Search On Various Data Sources Under Retention Of Their Original Access Rights

Ich versichere, dass ich diese Diplomarbeit selbständig verfaßt und nur die angegebenen Quellen und Hilfsmittel verwendet habe. This Document was created with: LATE

Rhona Hellman and the Munich School of Psychoacoustics

In the 1980ties we studied at our lab of the Technische Universität München the loudness of tone/noise complexes. Since Rhona Hellman had performed for NASA a large study on this topic, the late Professor Eberhard Zwicker and I invited Rhona in 1985 as a Guest Researcher to our lab. She came to Bavaria with her family and stayed several weeks in Munich. This paper presents some reminiscences of scientific achievements as well as social life.

ISTANBUL, TURKEY Psychoacoustics, sound quality and music

In this keynote, relations between psychoacoustics, sound quality, and music are discussed. In the domain of psychoacoustics, a Dynamic Loudness Model (DLM) is presented which can simulate loudness perception of sounds with strong temporal structure for both normal hearing persons and persons with (slight) hearing deficits. Recent results on the hearing sensation pitch strength will be presented and discussed in view of applications both in sound quality design and music. Sound quality is assessed on the one hand for products where it is a genuine feature like musical instruments, and on the other hand where it is just a by-product like Diesel engines or closing car doors. It is shown that the psychoacoustic magnitudes loudness and sharpness can account for largely different aspects like the annoyance of snoring sounds on the one hand and the sound quality of grand pianos on the other hand. The concept of psychoacoustic annoyance based on noise evaluation is contrasted with the concept of sensory pleasantness, anchored in musical acoustics. For questions of sound quality design, an approach incorporating elements of decision tree studies is proposed. The strong ties between psychoacoustics, sound quality and music have been advocated already about 150 years ago by Helmholtz. He postulated that musical consonance is governed by the absence of roughness. These days, roughness is one of the major ingredients for sound quality design. Also, musical dynamics from ppp to fff is reflected in modern category scaling procedures used in psychoacoustics as well as sound quality rating. Moreover, A-weighted level can be misleading with respect to loudness perception for both musical and technical sounds. Therefore, a loudness-thermometer is contrasted with a level-thermometer, including possible cognitive effects of recognizing the sound source.