The influence of sound quality on expected visual impression

Abstract

Information from visual and auditory systems is often linked. One example of the cross-modal connection between sound and visual experience is different materials that easily can be identified by their sound quality. The purpose of this investigation was to analyze the anticipated visual impression of three vacuum cleaners when listening to the product. The participants in the listening test where asked to describe the visual impression of the vacuum cleaners and also how they thought the vacuum cleaner sounded like with own words. The 24 listeners were both female and male of different ages and the vacuum cleaners were judged live. Often something that is large, for instance, a truck compared to a car, does produce more sound. The experience that large products are louder than small products is an influence when listening to vacuum cleaners. The listeners expected a large vacuum cleaner when listening to a rather loud vacuum cleaner. There was a unanimous opinion among the participants that a loud vacuum cleaner was ugly, had a box shape, and was old. The vacuum cleaners that were described to have a nice sound were described as small and round with a nice design and nice colors.