Sound quality of contemporary personal-computers

Abstract

Development of sound quality analysis in product design and marketing has drawn much attention in recent years. Many makers nowadays would like to know their products sound quality and to improve them instead of just reducing the overall sound pressure level. The noise of personal-computers is characterized as either rumble or containing pure tone components, while sound quality analysis may reveal additional information on the market acceptance and the noise influence to customers. The prevailing industrial test standards for product rating of these products, however, have not yet included the concept of sound quality. To investigate the possibility and appropriateness of adopting sound quality analysis in the test standard to rate product noise, we used many personal-computers in accordance with prevailing test standards such as ISO 7779. The results were then analyzed and indexes of sensory pleasantness were calculated by sound quality parameters of loudness, sharpness, roughness and tonality as suggested by Zwicker and Fastl. Comparison between sensory pleasantness values and sound power level indicates a large discrepancy in terms of product rating. It is suggested that the rating of these products by sensory pleasantness may be considered in the future.