Gear Lever Sound Quality Evaluation

Vehicle sound quality has become lately one of the main topics of study in the automotive industry which is associated with the quality of the product. Into the automotive development the static operational sound quality is one of the attributes that is considered. The sounds produced through the manipulation of items like the doors and interior components (windows, seats, safety belts, windshield wipers, and others) generated for safety and warning purposes are items related to the vehicle quality for customers. Those sounds based on relative level of intensity, duration, harmony and degree of contribution are elements that the customer will retain in mind, an overall quality impression. The sound produced during gear lever manipulation is important to the customer in order that the event should transmit low intensity and robust and soft impression. The purpose of this work is to evaluate this kind of event using binaural recordings inside the vehicle through subjective and objective evaluations. Psychoacoustic parameters (loudness, sharpness and roughness) and time - frequency spectrum (Wavelet transform) are proposed to correlate objective results with the subjective perception of gear lever sound quality.