A comparative study on subjective feeling of engine acceleration sound by automobile types

Abstract

To achieve marketing success, automobile companies are constantly striving to develop design elements that can create effective experiences for customers and establish their brand identity. Among the various design elements, engine sound is an important feature, which has been widely studied to understand the subjective feeling of the sound quality. This study aims to identify the representative affective variables of engine acceleration sound based on different vehicle types, and analyze their relation with psychoacoustic parameters. Affective adjectives were collected from previous researches and used to evaluate the engine acceleration sounds of different vehicle types, including 14 sedan cars and 10 sports cars, which were selected for the experiment. The third gear wide open throttle sounds of each automobile were recorded and evaluated by 36 adults. To quantify the representative affective variables, four psychoacoustic parameters namely loudness, sharpness, roughness, and tonality were utilized. The results showed there are two representative affective variables namely “comfort” and “sportiness”, which are significantly different across the vehicle types. The regression models for the affective variables showed distinct differences in the vehicle types. Furthermore, the results showed that the subjective feelings for engine acceleration sound depends on the vehicle type. The results of this research can be used to develop engine acceleration sounds that optimize subjective feelings for various vehicle types.