Specification of component sound quality applied to automobile power windows

As cars become quieter the sound quality of components with electric motors becomes more important in the customer perception of vehicle quality. This has created a need to develop methods for the specification of component sounds. The objectives of this study were to identify perceptually important aspects, link them to acoustic metrics and, based on this, develop guidelines for the determination of requirements for power window sound. Seven prominent attributes were identified: dull, loud, annoying, steady, powerful, overall product quality and under-dimensioned. Effects of auditory stream segregation influenced the results. Power window sounds mainly consist of two sources: motor and window seal scratching. Subjects tended to judge only motor sound. Prediction models developed on isolated motor sound correlated well with judgements. Low loudness, sharpness and motor speed fluctuations led to perceived high product quality. The results emphasise the importance of handling auditory stream segregation and temporal variations in the sound design process.     

Characterizing the sound quality of air-conditioning noise

The aim of the psychoacoustic study presented here was to characterize listeners' preferences for a set of sounds produced by different brands and models of indoor air-conditioning units. In addition, some synthetic sounds, created by interpolation between recorded sound samples, were integrated into the set. The multidimensional perceptual space and the corresponding physical space representative of the sound set were determined with multidimensional scaling (MDS). Then the preferences for different classes of listeners were related to the physical space. The best spatial model yielded by the MDS had three common dimensions and specificities. The three dimensions are correlated with the ratio of the noisy part of the spectrum to the harmonic part (NHR), with the spectral center of gravity (SC) and with loudness (N). Two classes of listeners can be distinguished in terms of preference. For one, preference varied primarily with loudness, whereas for the other it varied more with SC and NHR. However, for one class the preference grew with the parameter NHR, while it decreased for the other class. The results replicate under different laboratory conditions and indicate the usefulness of this sound quality assessment approach for characterizing appliance noises.     

Perceived quality features of aircraft sounds: An analysis of the measurement characteristics of a newly created semantic differential

The increasing air traffic in the past has led to the fact that and more and more people were affected by aircraft noise. Since the potential of reducing noise level of current aircraft will be limited in the future after recent developed techniques have been realized in practice.Therefore, additional efforts are necessary to improve the sound quality of aircraft noise and give hints to aircraft manufactures concerning components that have to be acoustically optimized. The present study describes the development of an item list for a semantic differential (SD) that is appropriate for the determination of different perceptive features of aircraft sound quality and focuses on the estimation of the reliability of this new instrument. The selected 10 SD items have relation to the sound components emitted by the different technical devices of airplane engines.The analyses of the measurement characteristics of the different items were based on G-theory. This method presupposes data possessing interval-scale-level characteristics. Therefore, the used rating scales were examined with respect to this attribute. The results verified that the data fulfill this precondition. The results gave evidence that the judgments show large inter-individual differences. The proportion of variance which can be traced back to the factor “aircraft sound” amounted to at most one-fifth of total variance indicating that the differences between the aircraft sounds are rather small. Nevertheless, the findings demonstrate that it is possible to measure not all but several decisive aspects with sufficient reliability and expense.     

Sound quality prediction of vehicle interior noise using deep belief networks

The sound quality of vehicle interior noise strongly influences passengers’ psychological and physiological perceptions. To predict the sound quality of interior noise, a vehicle road test with four compact cars has been conducted. All recorded interior noise signals have been denoised via a discrete wavelet transform (DWT) denoising procedure and subsequently evaluated subjectively through the anchor semantic differential (ASD) test by a jury. In addition, a novel prediction method, namely, regression-based deep belief networks (DBNs), which substitute the support vector regression (SVR) layer for the linear softmax classification layer at the top of the general DBN’s structure, has been proposed to predict the interior sound quality. The parameter selection of the DBN model has been compared and studied using a grid search. In addition, four conventional machine-learning-based methods have been introduced to enable a comparison of the performance with the newly developed DBNs. Furthermore, the feature fusion ability of DBNs has been studied by varying the amount of information that the dataset offers. The results show the following: (1) The accuracy and robustness of the proposed DBN-based sound quality prediction approach are better than those of the 4 other referenced methods. (2) The multiple-feature fusing process can strongly affect the prediction performance. (3) Finally, the unsupervised pre-training process of the DBNs can enhance the information fusing ability. Finally, the newly proposed regression-based DBN approach may be extended to address other vehicle noises in the future.     

Analysis of 160 Gb/s all-optical NRZ-to-RZ data format conversion using quantum-dot semiconductor optical amplifiers assisted Mach-Zehnder interferometer

A scheme of all-optical data format conversion from nonreturn-to-zero to return-to-zero is proposed using quantum-dot semiconductor optical amplifiers (QD SOAs) assisted Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI). The proposed scheme has the potential to operate at much larger bit rate ∼160 Gb/s, and the converted signal has a lower frequency chirp. 160 Gb/s all-optical format conversion is verified through numerical simulations, and the output contrast ratio and Q-factor are analyzed to evaluate the system performance. With properly selected parameters, the converted signal with a contrast ratio over 8 dB and a Q-factor over 8 can be achieved.     

Simulation of a morning air temperature inversion break-up in complex terrain and the influence on sound propagation on a local scale

A mesoscale atmospheric model is used to model the break up of a morning air-temperature inversion during a clear weather situation with low wind speeds at ground. Modified slope-radiation parameterization in the model results in more realistic predicted air temperature profiles when compared to profiles measured with a tethered balloon. A wave number integration code is used to demonstrate how the modelled atmospheric profiles can be used to predict the reduction of sound level along ground during inversion break-up.     

The effect of sound level on perception of reproduced soundscapes

The aim of this work was to investigate the perception of soundscape reproduced by an ambisonic reproduction system on a horizontal plane, how the experience of space affected the perception of soundscape reproduction, and how the sound level adjustment on soundscape reproduction affected the perception of soundscape compared with actual conditions. There were three experiments conducted: a soundwalk in situ in Manchester (United Kingdom) city centre, listening tests in Salford (United Kingdom), and listening tests in Bandung (Indonesia). The listening tests used material recorded from four locations on the soundwalk route in Manchester. The Salford listening tests were performed at the in-situ measured sound level, and the participants were asked to adjust the sound level to the level that represents actual locations. The listening test in Bandung was conducted to understand the effect of participants who never come to the actual location to the perception of soundscape and the sound level adjustment. The listening tests in Bandung were conducted at the in situ sound level, at 9.5 dB below the in situ sound level (based on the preference sound level from the experiment in Salford), and the participants were also requested to adjust the sound level to the level that represents the actual space (to examine the consistency with the experiment in Salford). In each case, soundscape perception was measured on 19 semantic differential scales. Analysis of the semantic differential results showed that the ambisonic reproduction produced a similar subjective experience to the in situ soundwalk when the reproduction sound level was 9.5 dB lower than the actual sound level in situ. Reproduction at the actual sound level in situ produced a different dimensional space. The study shows that the sound level adjustment of soundscape reproduction in laboratory experiment produces more ecologically valid results compared to the reproduction at the actual sound level in situ.     

The effect of workmanship on the transmission of airborne sound through light framed walls

A study of the airborne sound transmission in a multi-tenanted building has shown that elements of the building which are nominally identical do not have the same acoustic performance. It was seen that some of this variation in performance could be attributed to visually-observable differences in the constructions. Some of the variation could not be explained however, and it was concluded that this variation was due to workmanship. The level of this variation was seen to be approximately 1 dB for a light steel framed construction. This variation is considerably less than that measured previously for a monolithic construction.     

Study on the effect of sound duration on the annoyance of helicopter noise by applying a technique of time compression and expansion of sound signals

The number of helicopter operations has rapidly increased during the last 20 years in Japan. Helicopter noise sounds different from other aircraft; the waveform of the sound pressure is impulsive and the signal duration is relatively long. The Environmental Agency of Japan implemented new guidelines for evaluating noise exposure around small airports, including heliports, in 1990. This study was executed in connection with the development of provisional guidelines. Psychoacoustic experiments were carried out to identify an evaluation index for helicopter noise. In order to examine the effect of duration independently, we not only used original sound recordings, but also synthesized sound signals. The durations of these sound signals were time compressed or expanded without degrading the quality of the original sound recording. The test results show that the effect of duration is significant, and that the A-weighted sound exposure level is a better index than the maximum A-weighted sound pressure level for the evaluation of helicopter noise.     

The effect of visual stimuli on the horribleness of awful sounds

A mass web-based experiment has been carried out to explore people’s perception of horrible sounds. The advantage of a web-based methodology is that it enables hundreds of thousands of judgements to be obtained over a diverse population. As part of the project, the effect of what people saw on the screen on how they rated the sounds was examined. The sounds were auditioned with images that were either associated or unassociated with the sounds. It was found that images often affected how horrible the sound was perceived to be. For example, the image of finger nails on a blackboard made the associated sound more awful. However, in the case of disgusting sounds, such as the sound of someone eating, the images used had no significant effect on voting behaviour. The colour of the website was also varied. The hue of the website was found to be a significant factor, with a red website making the sounds less horrible than a blue/green website. The brightness and saturation of the website also altered people’s perceptions, with the brighter, more saturated website making the most awful sounds, such as the sound of someone vomiting, less horrible.     

Using experimental design to characterize the effect of structural elements on acoustical response of hand-free phone

This article presents an adaptation of the experimental design method (more precisely called “statistical design and analysis of experiments” and referred to as DOE) to acoustics. Experimental design is an efficient method to find an empirical relation whenever a theoretical one cannot be obtained or would be too difficult to obtain. This technique is not common in acoustics where it has been used in a few application cases to determine what product or process parameters affect the acoustic response. The response variable was single valued whereas, in the proposed method, it is an array of values, a frequency spectrum which constitutes a more practical tool for an advanced acoustic analysis. The results are presented on a spectrum plot where the factor effect is given in the physical quantity (dB) and the Fisher test of significance is presented as two plots of the lower and upper significance limits (also in dB). The method is applied to a hand-free telephone where, for subsequent modeling purposes, the method determines which structural factors affect the telephone acoustic response and what are the associated frequency ranges. This adaptation of the DOE method is validated with the verification of the results in three ways: first, with a complementary experimental design, second, with a more classical experimental method, and, third, with a computer simulation.     

利用焦利氏秤测定弹簧有效质量实验的几点讨论

从利用焦利氏秤测定弹簧有效质量实验出发,研究了弹簧与重物组成的系统做简谐振动时,弹簧形状和质量等参数对弹簧有效质量的影响,分析了开始计时的取点问题以及使用不同数据处理方法所带来的影响,并对所用开放式教学方法进行了探讨.     

Noise characteristics of tractors and health effect on farmers

An investigation was conducted to determine the noise propagation (under stationary condition) and noise at operator’s ear level of popular 18.7 and 26.1 kW tractors and 4.6 and 6.7 kW hand tractors during field operations with various implements. It was observed that both tractors produced the noise of 92 dB(A) L_eq in the working zone of operator. The sound pressure level (SPL) of the hand tractor was about 2 dB(A) L_eq higher than that of the tractor. The SPL during field operations at operator’s ear level increased with increase in engine speed and forward speed. Furthermore, the SPL was higher for field operations corresponding to the implement requiring higher draft. It was observed that the SPLs of the tractors and hand tractors were more than the exposure limit of noise for 8-h workday recommended by ISO and OSHA. This may cause health problems to the farmers in the long run.     

Role of memory effect in the evolution of cooperation based on spatial prisoner's dilemma game

We investigate the impact of memory effect on the evolution of cooperation in the spatial prisoner's dilemma game, in which each player will record his own strategies during the previous M game rounds (here, M is also named as the memory length). At each time step, each individual will update his current strategy according to the Fermi-like probability which will be multiplied by a pre-factor, and this factor will be correlated with the fraction of previous strategy states identical with the individual strategy to be updated. The numerical simulation results demonstrate that the memory length will largely influence the cooperation level at the stationary state, and it is clearly shown that the intermediate value of M will optimally favor the emergence of cooperation and the dynamical evolution, and characteristic patterns also support these conclusions. In addition, we depict the full cooperation phase diagrams and find that the cooperation region will be broadened under the case of moderate M values. The current results also indicate that the limited memory may be enough for us to design the effective promotion mechanism and further understand the emergency of cooperation taking place upon many networked populations.     

Enhancement of pupil-masked wavelength-scale gas-filled flat acoustic lens based on anomaly apodization effect

In this letter, the improvement in focus by the use of a pupil mask produced in an acoustic mesoscale cuboid particle filled with CO₂ is reported. Thereby, the result shows that the pupil mask increases the sound intensity and also increases the resolution (or a reduction of the full width at half maximum, FWHM) in focus compared to the non-masked one. These results are important because they confirm the effect of abnormal amplitude apodization for a one-wavelength dimension acoustic lens and demonstrate that it is possible to improve sound focusing of a cuboid gas-filled lens with one wavelength dimension. This is the smallest size of an acoustic lens ever considered in this type of literature, with side dimensions of the cube equal to one wavelength and a diameter to focus ratio of 2.5, the sound amplification in focus is 5.4 dB at 4125 Hz, with the resolution near to the diffraction limit.     

The effect of the earth's magnetic field on auger analysis

Semi-quantitative analyses of thin films or surfaces are commonly obtained from the peak intensities in the differentiated Auger spectrum. To reduce effects of surface roughness, beam focus and electron current, ratios of peak heights are used rather than absolute values. In performing analysis of CdSe single crystal and thin film samples in a commercial Auger analyzer fitted with a cylindrical mirror analyzer (CMA), the ratio of the Cd(376 eV) to Se(1315 eV) peaks was found to vary by as much as 15% when the diameter of the incident electron beam was increased from 5 to 60 μm. The effect was found to be due to an energy-dependent shift of the electron beam caused by the earth's magnetic field. The electron transmission of the CMA was measured as a function of the primary electron beam spot position on the sample. The transmission decreases rapidly once the spot falls outside an area with a radius ～25 μm. Due to this response, the relative shift in position caused by the magnetic field produces variations in peak ratios when the spot size is changed. This effect will produce inaccurate analysis if the Auger peaks differ significantly in energy and the primary electron beam spot size is large, and accounts for the observed 15% variation in $\text{Cd}\text{Se}$ ratio.     

Strong water repellency effect on SiO<Subscript>2</Subscript> films processed at a nanometric scale

The present study deals with the creation of nano-rough surfaces with stable and controlled high hydrophobicity. These surfaces were obtained by combining the ion track etching technique with a simple functionalization by grafting perfluoroctyltrichlorosilane (PFOTS) molecules. Surface morphology was investigated by AFM observations which evidenced a self-affine fractal structure with a fractal dimension D_f ~ 2.6. The study of the wetting properties of these surfaces allowed to elucidate the conditions for observing a high hydrophobicity phenomenon and to predict the contact angle values for surfaces designed at a nanometric scale.