A Study on Affective Dimensions to Engine Acceleration Sound Quality Using Acoustic Parameters

The technical performance of recent automobiles is highly progressed and standardized across different manufacturers. This study seeks to derive a semantic space of engine acceleration sound quality for end users and identify the relation with sound characteristics. For this study, two affective attributes: ‘refined’ and ‘powerful’, and eight acoustic parameters considering revolutions per minute were used to determine the correlation coefficient for those affective attributes. In the experiment, a total of 35 automobiles were selected. Each of the 3rd gear wide open throttle sounds was recorded and evaluated by 42 adult subjects with normal hearing ability and driving license. Their subjective evaluations were analyzed using factor analysis, independent t-test, correlation analysis, and regression analysis. The prediction models for the affective dimensions show distinct differences for the revolutions per minute. From the experiment, it was confirmed that the customers’ affective response can be predicted through the acoustic parameters. In addition, it was found that the initial revolutions per minute in the accelerated condition had the greatest influence on the affective response. This study can be a useful guideline to design engine acceleration sounds that satisfy customers’ affective experience.