High-Resolution Option for the Sottek Hearing Model tonality enables Accurate Order Analysis

2025-01-0093

05/05/2025

Features
Event
Noise & Vibration Conference & Exhibition
Authors Abstract
Content
The Sottek Hearing Model provides a comprehensive framework for understanding the nuances of sound perception, including such aspects as loudness, tonality, roughness, fluctuation strength, sharpness, and impulsiveness. The principal model was first published more than three decades ago as part of a doctoral thesis. Over the past few decades, the model has been refined and recently standardized in the international standard ECMA 418-2. This standard addresses several psychoacoustic parameters, including a new approach to time-varying loudness based on a nonlinear combination of partial tonal and noise loudness (as part of the tonality). This is the preferable approach because the loudness of tonal components (i.e., tonal loudness) may have a more pronounced impact on loudness perception than the loudness caused by other components (i.e., noise loudness). Other standardized parameters include psychoacoustic modulation analyses. These are roughness, which is employed to evaluate rapidly modulated sounds (standardized in ECMA 418-2 since 2020, updated in 2024), and fluctuation strength, which is an adapted model for slowly modulated sounds (planned for standardization in June 2025). Many practical applications in the automotive sector require order-related results to be displayed. This is challenging when considering the coarse frequency estimate typically provided due to the critical bandwidth of the auditory filters. This resolution is sufficient for psychoacoustic parameter evaluation but not as an input to an order analysis. Improvements have recently been made to the Sottek Hearing Model Tonality to provide results with a very high frequency resolution that allows for accurate order analysis. The paper describes the method and presents several automotive application examples.
Meta TagsDetails
DOI
https://doi.org/10.4271/2025-01-0093
Pages
6
Citation
Sottek, R., and Bray, W., "High-Resolution Option for the Sottek Hearing Model tonality enables Accurate Order Analysis," SAE Technical Paper 2025-01-0093, 2025, https://doi.org/10.4271/2025-01-0093.
Additional Details
Publisher
Published
May 05
Product Code
2025-01-0093
Content Type
Technical Paper
Language
English