Sound Quality Metric Development for Wind Buffeting and Gusting Noise

Abstract

<div class="htmlview paragraph">Customer annoyance of steady-state wind noise correlates well with loudness. A common objective metric to capture average loudness is the ISO532B or Zwicker method. However, it has been shown previously that <i>time-varying</i> wind noise can also significantly affect customer annoyance, independent of average loudness. Causes of time-varying wind noise include wind buffeting generated by other vehicles, and also wind gusting.</div> <div class="htmlview paragraph">This paper summarizes the development of an objective metric that correlates well with subjective impressions of wind gusting/buffeting. The model is based on a general impulsive noise model with parameters tuned specifically for time-varying wind characteristics. The model consists of a psychoacoustic processing stage followed by a gusting detection stage, where the psychoacoustic stage is extracted from a time-varying loudness model. The output of the gusting model is a time series that indicates the location and “intensity” of wind gusts. The information in this time series is reduced to a single number that indicates the amount of gusting in the wind noise. An overview of the model and correlation of the metric to various listening studies are presented.</div>