Can partial loudness of the tonal content be the basis for tone adjustments?

Abstract

Environmental sounds containing tonal components are more annoying than those without audible tonal components. This is considered in several standards addressing the assessment of noise immissions. These standards have in common that the strength of the tonal component, referred to as tonality, tonalness, or magnitude of tonal content is taken as the level of the prominent audible tone relative to the surrounding background noise. Based on this magnitude of tonal content, some standards add tone adjustments to the measured sound levels to account for the reduced acceptance of a sound with audible tonal components. On the basis of experimental data and model predictions, the present study shows that the magnitude of the tonal content is better characterized by its partial loudness than by the signal-to-noise ratio of the prominent tonal component. Partial loudness of the tonal component may be considered in future standards as a basis for the assessment of the annoyance of the tonal content of a sound and thus the determination of a tone adjustment.