Perceptual asymmetry in the subjective duration of ramped and damped sounds

Michael Vannier , Sabine Meunier (1) , Patrick Susini (2) , Jacques Chatron (1)

1 LMA - Laboratoire de Mécanique et d'Acoustique [Marseille]
2 STMS - Sciences et Technologies de la Musique et du Son

Time-varying-level sounds that increase or decrease in level are well established to induce auditory perceptual asymmetries, for loudness and subjective duration. Several studies revealed ramped sounds to be perceived louder than equivalent damped sounds using durations from few milliseconds to few seconds. In addition, other studies revealed ramped sounds to be perceived longer than damped sounds for durations from 10 ms to 500 ms. As a consequence, it could be hypothesized that the perceived duration asymmetry may be responsible for the loudness asymmetry. Thus, the aim of the present study was to extend the results about asymmetries in subjective duration for tones above 500 ms, in order to test the plausibility of the hypothesis under these conditions. Using a 2I-2AFC adaptive method, ramped and damped tones were matched in duration to the point of subjective equality. At equal subjective duration, short-damped sounds (< 0.5 s) were matched longer than short-ramped sounds, confirming previous results, whereas long-damped sounds (0.5 to 2 s) were matched to the same duration as long-ramped sounds, which question the hypothesis for durations above 500 ms.

Mots clés: Loudness; Asymmetry; Duration; Subjective

Domaines: Acoustique [physics.class-ph]

Michael Vannier, Sabine Meunier, Patrick Susini, Jacques Chatron. Perceptual asymmetry in the subjective duration of ramped and damped sounds. Acoustics 2012, Apr 2012, Nantes, France. ⟨hal-00810853⟩