Development of psychoacoustic model based on the correlation of the subjective and objective sound quality assessment of automatic washing machines

In practice, the procedures of the sound quality assessment are often different and do not guarantee the same results in ranking the products from best sound quality to worst. The main objective of this paper is to develop the sound quality index that will ensure the objective assessment of the sound quality of automatic washing machines. The sound quality index is based on the determination of weighting factors for five selected psychoacoustic quantities. The weighting factors have been obtained by the correlation and subsequent statistical processing of the objective binaural measurement and the questionnaire survey with 81 respondents. Point scores obtained from the respondents were subsequently statistically correlated with measured psychoacoustic parameters by the multi-criteria method, namely the weighted sum method (Pearson). By the application of the obtained weighting factors to the measured psychoacoustic parameters, it is possible to objectively determine the sound quality index of automatic washing machines without the questionnaire survey.