Objective evaluation of human perception of automotive sound based on physiological signal of human brain

This paper presents a novel approach to apply the physiological signal of the human brain to the sound quality evaluation of automotive sound. In the previous work, psychoacoustic metrics were applied to the sound quality evaluation of automotive sound. Loudness among psychoacoustic metrics is used for one of major sound metrics for the objective evaluation of the sound quality of the acceleration sound inside a car. Subjective evaluation of the sound quality of the acceleration sound shows different results depending on the two different groups of participants. One group liked powerful sound when a car is accelerated: the other group liked the refine sound. Loudness of the acceleration sound is not correlated with the subjective rating of the former group whilst it is correlated with that of the latter group. This evaluation suggests that for the people who like the powerful acceleration sound, it needs to find the sound metric for the objective evaluation of the sound quality of the acceleration sound. In this paper, a driver’s brain signal is measured using electroencephalography (EEG) when a driver hears the acceleration sound of passenger cars. The signal is analyzed to obtain the relationship between brain signals and human perception. According to these results, the alpha wave correlates to the human perception of powerful sound quality of passenger cars. This interesting relationship can be used for objective evaluation of passenger car sounds.