STANDARD SAMPLE METHOD AND APPLICATION FOR SUBJECTIVE NOISE EVALUATION

In the field of noise annoyance, anchored scoring is one of the most widely used subjective evaluation methods. By choosing the standard sample as the anchor stimulus in subjective evaluation which is referred to as Standard Sample Method (SSM), it is possible to improve the comparability between experimental results obtained from different experimental listening studies and to enable horizontal comparison between them. It must be noted, however, that the mechanisms of annoyance caused by different types of noise differ, which makes the SSM ineffective in some types of noise evaluation experiments. Hence, a White Noise Standard Sample Method (WN-SSM) based on the existing Pure Tone Standard Sample Method (PT-SSM) was proposed to extend the application of the standard sample method. An experimental study was conducted to examine the performance of two types of standard sample methods based on the annoyance evaluation of three types of similar/dissimilar noise combinations with obviously different spectral and perceptual characteristics, using the evaluation result of the common anchored scoring method as a benchmark. The results showed that the pure tone SSM is more suitable for assessing noise with obvious tonal perception, while the white noise SSM is better suited for assessing noise with weak tonal perception. Moreover, the conversion method between the annoyance evaluation results under different reference samples was studied.