The Journal of the Acoustical Society of KoreaISSN:1225-4428(Print) 2287-3775(Online)한국음향학회

Most of noises from cars or home appliances accompany successive impulsive noise due to repeated operation. A human auditory system is able to perceive the successive impulsive noise as either a set of independent noise or amplitude modulated noise according to its occurrence period. This study is to identify main influence factors on understanding of impulsive characteristics and find most appropriate sound quality metrics to express the successive impulsive noise. To do this, the successive impulsive noises were designed and utilized to perform a listening test for identifying conditions where successive impulsive noise can be recognized to have impulsive characteristics. These results were analyzed with sound quality metrics such as loudness, fluctuation strength, and roughness in order to compare the subjective results with the objective results. Consequently, the results revealed that the successive impulsive noise exhibits impulsive characteristics when its occurrence frequency is less than 50 Hz. It was also observed that roughness and fluctuation strength results are not applicable to express the successive impulsive noise because they heavily depend on the amplitude modulation characteristics. On the other hand, loudness results are considered to be useful as an evaluation factor of the successive impulsive noise through the use of loudness limen because it does not depend on the amplitude modulation characteristics.