Loudness of pink noise and stationary technical sounds
Josef Schlittenlacher, Takashi Hashimoto, Hugo Fastl, Seiichiro Namba, Sonoko Kuwano, S Hatano · 2011
Although their basic concept is similar, the current standards for the calculation of loudness, ANSI S3.4-2007 and DIN 45631 (1991), produce significantly different results for many kinds of sounds. While their values for pure tones can be explained by the equal loudness contours of their times, they also show huge discrepancies for broadband sounds. For this reason, extended psychoacoustic experiments were made in order to find target values for the loudness of pink noise at various levels. Furthermore, the performance of the algorithms was investigated by subjective tests on several technical sounds at a large scale of loudness levels. In all cases, the method of adjustment was used. The results suggest that DIN 45631 (1991) predicts loudness very well. Its estimations are within the interquartile range of the subjective evaluations.