Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Loudness
Decibels
In this exercise you will clarify your perception about the decibel scale. Can you summarize what is a decibel, what is it for, and where you would use it? Do you know of any approximate equivalence between decibels and the musical notation for dynamics? Relative jumps in names (pp->p, ff->fff) could roughly equal a 10dB (twice/half loudness) jump In the first part of this demonstration, we hear broadband noise reduced in steps of 6, 3, and 1 dB in order to obtain a feeling for the decibel scale. In the latter part, a voice is heard at distances of 25, 50, 100, and 200 cm from an omni-directional microphone in an anechoic chamber. Under these conditions, the sound pressure level decreases about 6 dB each time the distance is doubled. [In a normal room this will not be the case, because of reflections from walls, ceiling, floor, and objects in the room.] Now you can listen to this example
In acoustics, the sound pressure of a spherical wavefront radiating from a point source decreases by 50% as the distance r is doubled, or measured in dB it decreases by 6.02 dB. So, at 0.5 m it sounds at -6dB (perceptually not at all half the original loudness), at 1m it sounds 12dB (loudness halved), and at 2m it sounds -18, nearly 4 times softer than the original one.
Do you think that the subjective decrease is identical to the physical intensity decrease (dBSPL)? http://www.iua.upf.es/~perfe/psicoacustica/tema2/sons-02/Exemple1b.wav
In this last example you will be presented 3 different tones: http://www.iua.upf.es/~perfe/cursos/psicoacustica/loudness/ComplexLoudness.wav Explain the loudness (and maybe timbre) sensations generated by each one of them.
1: 1kHz sinusoid 2: Partials at 500, 1000, 1500, 2000, 2500, 3000 3: Partials at 500, 1100, 1773, 2173, 2717, 3141 roughness, ambiguous pitch-
Loudness scaling
Establishing a scale of subjective loudness requires careful psychoacoustical experimentation involving large numbers of subjects. A scale of sones has been used widely to describe subjective loudness. On this 0.6 scale, the loudness in sones S is proportional to sound pressure p raised to the 0.6 power: S = Cp , where C depends on the frequency. In other words, the loudness doubles for about a 10 dB increase in sound pressure level. Some investigators have found that the exponent varies with tone frequency, increasing at low frequency and low level to approach a value of 1.0. [An exponent of 1.0 would mean that loudness doubled for a 6 dB increase in sound pressure level.] In this demonstration, a reference sound of broadband noise alternates with similar sounds having levels of 0, 5, 10, 15, or 20 dB with respect to the reference tone. The tones are 1 second long, separated by 250 ms of quiet, and the trials are separated by 2.25 s of quiet. To help establish a scale, the reference tone is first presented along with the strongest and weakest sound that will be heard. Think of the reference tone as having a loudness of "100". Then a test tone you hear as twice as loud as the reference tone would be designated as "200", and a test tone half as loud as the reference would be "50", etc. For each of the 20 pairs, write down a number reflecting the loudness of the second (test) tone relative to the reference. As we mentioned, to help establish a scale, the reference tone is first presented along with the strongest and weakest sound that will be heard:
Paste here your numeric assignments. Below (dont look there now) youll find the sequence of levels that were used so you could check if you gave reasonable answers. Please, explain what could happen if the reference tone would be centered around 100Hz instead of 1kHz. And if it was around 8 kHz instead of 1000 Hz? Any volunteer?
Now listen to this sound example and decide which loudness difference and dB difference could be between the two pairs of tones to be presented. 1: +6dB (it should sound a bit louder) 2: +10dB (this should sound twice louder)
Now dump here your results: 125: 250: 500: 1000: 2000: 4000: 8000: Are them similar to Fletcher & Munsons results? If that was not the case, try an explanation for that.
With the help of an equal loudness curve please answer these questions: o Which is the phon level of a pure tone of 200 Hz. at 30 dB? 22phon o Which is the dB level of a pure tone of 4000 Hz that is isophonic with another of 8000 Hz at 40 dB? Phon level for 8kHz@40dB is 30phon, 4000Hz@30 phon is about 22dB o Which should be the dB values to be set on an equalizer in order that the frequencies (in Hz) 125, 250, 500, 1000, 2000, 4000, and 8000 would have the same loudness level, if we would be listening at 40 dBSPL? (and using a reference for those values 0 dB at 1000Hz i.e., at 1000Hz the EQ would be set flat, not amplifying, not attenuating-)? +10, 0, -3, 0, 0, -7, +8 o With the help of the isophones, calculate the level (in dBSPL) resulting after simultaneously playing 3 pure tones of 100, 1000 i 10000 Hz, in case each one would generate a loudness
dB values cannot directly summed!!! First convert to linear scale (pressure), then sum the pressures and convert back to dB 67dB = 0.044774423 Pa 60dB = 0.02 Pa 65dB = 0.035565588 Pa 0.1003 Pa = 74.005 dBSPL http://www.sengpielaudio.com/calculator-soundlevel.htm
Now listen to this, and then to this. Explain the differences. Could you tell the differences in intensity between those of the second sound example (you can use the equal loudness curves)? 1:Equal intensity 2: Equal loudness
Temporal Integration
How does the loudness of an impulsive sound compare with the loudness of a steady sound at the same sound level? Numerous experiments have pretty well established that the "ear" averages sound energy over about 0.2 s (200 ms), so loudness grows with duration up to this value, loudness level increasing by 10 dB when the duration is increased by a factor of 10. The loudness level of broadband noise seems to depend somewhat more strongly on stimulus duration than the loudness level of pure tones. In this demonstration, bursts of broadband noise having durations of 1000, 300, 100, 30, 10, 3, and 1 ms are presented at 8 decreasing levels (0 or reference level for listening-, -16, -20, -24, -28, -32, -36, and -40 dB) in the presence of a broadband masking noise. Count the number of steps you are able to hear in each case. http://www.iua.upf.es/%7Eperfe/psicoacustica/tema2/sons-02/EXEMPLE9.SND
Paste here a table or plot your results and comment/explain them. What happens with durations shorter than 200ms? Why?
Alternatively you could use typical masking pattern curve A pure tone masks tones of higher frequency more effectively than tones of lower frequency. This demonstration uses tones of 1200 and 2000 Hz, presented as 200 ms tone bursts separated by 100 ms. The unchanging masker is part of every pulse, while the test tone, added to every other pulse, decreases in 10 steps of 5 dBSPL each, except the first step which is 15 dB. First the masker is 1200 Hz and the test tone is 2000 Hz, then the masker is 2000 Hz and the test tone 1200 Hz. Count how many steps of the test tone can be heard in each case. Before listening to the example, please explain the predictions that you could put in advance (will you hear more tones in the first phase or in the second phase? Why?) Now listen to this file and write down the amount of pairs that you can hear in each phase.
Were the predictions accomplished? If not, provide some explanation. Which differences could be observed if the pairs were 100 and 180 Hz, or 6000 and 7000 Hz.? You could quickly generate the tones and test your predictions.
Anybody did the test? 180 is nearly outside the CB of 100, 7000 is inside the CB of 6000 both differences are closer that 1200 and 2000 in terms of CBs, so higher masking should be expected
Now the tone will be masked by broadband noise http://www.iua.upf.es/~perfe/cursos/psicoacustica/masking/cb2.wav Count how many steps can be heard:
Now we are going to mask the tone with a 1000 Hz bandwidth noise. http://www.iua.upf.es/~perfe/cursos/psicoacustica/masking/cb3.wav Count how many steps can be heard:
Now we are going to mask the tone with a 250Hz bandwidth noise. http://www.iua.upf.es/~perfe/cursos/psicoacustica/masking/cb4.wav Count how many steps can be heard:
Finally the noise bandwidth is reduced to 10 Hz. http://www.iua.upf.es/~perfe/cursos/psicoacustica/masking/cb5.wav Count how many steps can be heard: Provide an explanation for what you have experienced during this demonstration.
Usually more steps can be perceived in the backward condition than in the forward condition