The Effects of Acoustic Intensity, Spectrum, and Duration on Global Loudness Change

Abstract

Global loudness change is apost-stimulus retrospective judgement that measures listeners' overall impressions of loudness change in response to stimuli with continuous increases (up-ramps)a nd decreases (down-ramps) of acoustic intensity that are otherwise acoustically identical. Past results indicate that global loudness change is significantly greater in response to up-ramps relative to down-ramps for tonal stimuli (e.g., vowel)b ut not white-noise. An adaptive perceptual bias for up-ramp tonal stimuli has been proposed as afunctional ecological explanation. However, global loudness change may also be influenced by stimulus duration and an end-level recency-in-memory mechanism that biases retrospective global judgements on aramp'send-levelintensity,rather than its entire magnitude of intensity change. The present within-subjects experiment (N = 34)w as designed to systematically investigate the effects of intensity,s pectrum, and duration on global loudness change when end-levelrecencyiscontrolled. Up-ramps and down-ramps were embedded within twospectral conditions (tonal vowel /@/a nd white-noise)a nd presented over three durations (1.8 s, 3.6 s, 7.2 s) and twor egions of intensity change (45-65 dB SPL, 65-85 dB SPL).E nd-levelr ecencyr esponse bias wasc ontrolled through the use of balanced end-levelc omparisons between 45-65 dB SPL up-ramps and 85-65 dB SPL down-ramps that both converged on 65 dB SPL. Overall, global loudness change wass ignificantly greater in response to vowel and white-noise up-ramps, relative to their corresponding down-ramps. However, with end-levelrecencycontrolled, global loudness change wass ignificantly greater for up-ramps relative to down-ramps in 3.6 sa nd 7.2 sv owel conditions only.T his wasf acilitated by an up-ramp-specifice ff ect of duration, where the magnitude of global loudness change increased as vowel up-ramp duration increased from 3.6 sto7.2 s. The findings are discussed in the context of psychoacoustics and ecological acoustics.

A “looming bias” in spatial hearing? Effects of acoustic intensity and spectrum on categorical sound source localization

“…Varying the range of intensity change within a ramped stimulus would intrinsically vary the rate of intensity change over a ramp's 1-s duration. The rate of intensity change per unit time is a key indicator of the perceived velocity of motion from a sound source (Carlile & Leung, 2016) and has been shown to influence perceptual asymmetries in both subjective duration and loudness change (Meunier et al, 2014;Olsen & Herff, 2015). Furthermore, the linear change of intensity used in the present study indicated a decelerating approaching object in the environment, rather than a constant-velocity approach (Neuhoff, 2001).…”

“…Specifically, continuous increases (or up-ramps) of intensity are associated with looming sound sources in the environment, and continuous decreases (or down-ramps) of intensity are associated with receding sound sources (Neuhoff, 1998;Olsen, Stevens, & Tardieu, 2010). In psychoacoustic experiments, asymmetries in the perception of up-ramps and down-ramps have been reported in the context of subjective duration (DiGiovanni & Schlauch, 2007;Grassi & Darwin, 2006;Meunier, Vannier, Chatron, & Susini, 2014), global loudness (Ponsot, Meunier, Kacem, Chatron, & Susini, 2015;Stecker & Hafter, 2000), and loudness change (Neuhoff, 1998;Olsen & Herff, 2015;Teghtsoonian, Teghtsoonian, & Canévet, 2005). To summarize this literature, up-ramps are commonly perceived as being louder, longer, and covering a greater magnitude of loudness change than down-ramps (for a review, see Olsen, 2014).…”

Preface

“…Theys howed no influence of frequencyo nt he effect, ad ecrease of the effect for broad-band noise compared to pure tones and also adecrease when the overall levelincreases. Olsen and Herff [4] also used rising and falling stimuli buti nc ontrast to the study by Ponsot and colleagues [3] theym easured the perceivedloudness change and howthis is influenced by spectrum, intensity and duration. Theys howed an end-levelr ecencye ff ect when global loudness change is measured.…”

“…They found that loudness is the main factor used by participants to judge the similarity between sounds. Despite this importance of loudness in auditory perception of sounds, the temporal aspects described in [2,3,4,5] are still not included in current loudness models. This may be part of the reason whyd ynamic models are not always predicting loudness of time-varying sounds as shown in [7] and [8].…”

“…It is shown that this change in perceivedloudness overtime is different for modulated and unmodulated sounds and is affected by the type of modulation. While Eeckhoutte and colleagues [2] used signals with no overall change in intensity overtime, Ponsot et al [3] and Olsen and Herff [4] investigated the loudness for stimuli with rising or falling intensity.S everal previous studies showed that rising sounds are often louder and perceivedaschanging more in loudness than falling sounds although their long-term spectra are the same. Ponsot and colleagues [3] investigated the role of frequencycontent and levelonthis direction-specifice ff ect in global loudness.…”