Combining online aural experimentation and physical analysis

Abstract

The physical phenomenon of sound can be visualized with a high degree of freedom in terms of sound pressure level and loudness with respect to time and frequency. On the other hand, to obtain a sensory evaluation of the sound, it is a labor-intensive and costly task to prepare a certain number of subjects, set up a playback environment and playback equipment, tabulate the results, and perform subsequent analysis. The system introduced here can easily create simple listening experiments using sound source data managed on the cloud, and distribute the experiments on the Web. Subjects can participate in experiments without time and travel constraints, and experiments with an unprecedented number of subjects can be performed in a short period of time. In addition, the correlation between the rating scale and the physical quantity is automatically calculated, reducing the man-hours required for analysis. In this paper, we present the advantages and disadvantages of this system over conventional controlled subjective evaluation experiments, and mention the value of using this system based on actual examples.