Investigation of the Correlation between Objective Noise Measurement and Subjective Classification

Often the perceived annoyance of noise does not correspond with the A-weighted sound pressure level. The disagreement is because of the unique directional and pattern-recognition properties of human hearing. Therefore the importance of psychoacoustic attributes, such as perceived loudness (considering masking effects) roughness (modulation of tonal components), sharpness (relationship of high-frequency components to low-frequency ones), harmony (distribution of tonal components), spatial selectivity and so on, is becoming appreciated. The correlation of objective measurement and subjective classification of noise can be improved by considering the final receiver, “human hearing”, and developing methods of deriving and analyzing metric data based on human hearing.