Spectral loudness summation as a function of duration

Abstract

Loudness was measured as a function of signal bandwidth for 10-, 100-, and 1000-ms-long signals. The test and reference signals were bandpass-filtered noise spectrally centered at 2 kHz. The bandwidth of the test signal was varied from 200 to 6400 Hz. The reference signal had a bandwidth of 3200 Hz. The reference levels were 45, 55, and 65 dB SPL. The level to produce equal loudness was measured with an adaptive, two-interval, two-alternative forced-choice procedure. A loudness matching procedure was used, where the tracks for all signal pairs to be compared were interleaved. Mean results for nine normal-hearing subjects showed that the magnitude of spectral loudness summation depends on signal duration. For all reference levels, a 6- to 8-dB larger level difference between equally loud signals with the smallest (delta f = 200 Hz) and largest (delta f = 6400 Hz) bandwidth is found for 10-ms-long signals than for the 1000-ms-long signals. The duration effect slightly decreases with increasing reference loudness. As a consequence, loudness models should include a duration-dependent compression stage. Alternatively, if a fixed loudness ratio between signals of different duration is assumed, this loudness ratio should depend on the signal spectrum.

Loudness in the Laboratory, Part I: Steady-State Sounds

“…In contrast, loudness increased as frequency separation began to exceed the critical band. These results were confirmed in later studies (e.g., Scharf 1959Scharf , 1962Florentine et al 1978;Cacace and Margolis 1985;Schneider 1988;Verhey and Kollmeier 2002;Leibold et al 2007). Data from the recent study by Leibold et al (2007), who used a five-tone complex centered on 1 kHz, are shown in Fig.…”

Comparison of Absolute Thresholds Derived from an Adaptive Forced-Choice Procedure and from Reaction Probabilities and Reaction Times in a Simple Reaction Time Paradigm

“…How is it then that simple RT can correlate with loudness? We suggest here that the link is via a phenomenon called Btemporal summation of loudness,^which refers to the observation that the loudness of a tone or noise stimulus increases as stimulus duration increases, with SPL unchanged (e.g., Munson 1947;Niese 1959;Port 1963;Niese 1965, 1970;Ekman et al 1966;Scharf 1978;Poulsen 1981;Kumagai et al 1984;Sone et al 1986;Namba 1987;Takeshima et al, 1988;Ogura et al 1991;Florentine et al 1996;Buus et al 1997;Verhey and Kollmeier 2002;Sanpetrino and Zwislocki 2004). In combination with these observations, our data suggest the following reasoning.…”

Comparison of loudness models for time-varying sounds

“…Several studies have shown that the leveld i ff erence between broadband and equally loud narrowband noise bursts is considerably larger for short bursts (typically 10 ms)than for long bursts of typically 1000 ms [71,21,72,73]. Rennies et al [74] have shown that both the DLM and the TVL predict the same leveldifference for short and long signals and fail to predict this effect 3 .…”