From acoustic descriptors to evoked quality of car door sounds

Marie-Céline Bezat (1) , Richard Kronland-Martinet (2) , Vincent Roussarie (1) , Sølvi Ystad (2)

1 PSA Peugeot Citroën
2 Sons

This article describes the first part of a study aiming at adapting the mechanical car door construction to the drivers' expectancies in terms of perceived quality of cars deduced from car door sounds. A perceptual cartography of car door sounds is obtained from various listening tests aiming at revealing both ecological and analytical properties linked to evoked car quality. In the first test naïve listeners performed absolute evaluations of five ecological properties (i.e., solidity, quality, weight, closure energy, and success of closure). Then experts in the area of automobile doors categorized the sounds according to organic constituents (lock, joints, door panel), in particular whether or not the lock mechanism could be perceived. Further, a sensory panel of naïve listeners identified sensory descriptors such as classical descriptors or onomatopoeia that characterize the sounds, hereby providing an analytical description of the sounds. Finally, acoustic descriptors were calculated after decomposition of the signal into a lock and a closure component by the Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD) method. A statistical relationship between the acoustic descriptors and the perceptual evaluations of the car door sounds could then be obtained through linear regression analysis.

Mots clés: perceived quality; ecological listening; analytical listening; EMD; acoustic descriptors

Domaines: Acoustique [physics.class-ph]; Ingénierie de l'environnement

Marie-Céline Bezat, Richard Kronland-Martinet, Vincent Roussarie, Sølvi Ystad. From acoustic descriptors to evoked quality of car door sounds. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2014, 136 (1), pp.226-241. ⟨10.1121/1.4883364⟩. ⟨hal-01005551⟩