Characterization and quantification of luxury sound quality in premium-class passenger cars

Abstract: Luxury sound is one of the most important sound qualities in a premium passenger car. Previous work has shown that, because of the effects of many different interior sounds, it is difficult to evaluate the luxury sound objectively by using only the A-weighted sound pressure level. The characteristics of such sound were systematically investigated and a new objective evaluation was proposed of the luxury sound quality index. This was developed by the systematic combination of the seven major interior sound quality indices based on path analysis. These sounds inside a passenger car were evaluated by the members of a luxury automotive club. Then, by using sound metrics (psychoacoustic parameters) and multiple regression, seven major interior sound quality indexes were developed. Multiple regression was used to model the correlation between objective and subjective evaluation. The newly developed luxury sound quality index can be applied to the objective evaluation of the seven premium passenger cars in a pilot car stage based on the customer preference