Automotive Sound Quality

Consumers identify sound as a major criterion in impressions of the overall quality of a product. Sound quality has been important to the automotive industry for decades and now is also a primary concern for manufacturers of consumer appliances, office equipment, power tools, marine equipment, off-highway construction vehicles, farm equipment, and other products.

Achieving desirable sound quality is a much more sophisticated process than simply determining that a measured sound is "too loud." This engineering process goes far beyond basic sound level analysis. It requires tools that can identify key characteristics of the sound that correlate to consumer perceptions of quality. These tools must be able to identify those aspects of the design that can be modified to eliminate specific, objectionable sounds and yet retain appropriate, desirable sounds.

Automotive Sound Quality Bundle BZ-6047 is comprised of four sound quality modules, containing tools to diagnose sound problems and produce desirable design targets:

• Automotive SQ Core BZ-6048
• Automotive SQ Real-time Filtering BZ-6049
• Automotive SQ Metrics BZ-6050
• Automotive SQ Designer BZ-6051

For high performance tracking of harmonic responses, or orders, Automotive SQ Vold-Kalman Filtering BZ-6052 can be added to the configuration.

I-deas Jury Evaluation Software:

I-deas Jury Evaluation Software is an easy-to-use tool for measuring human responses to sound characteristics. The resulting data can be used to help reduce or eliminate undesirable noises in products and components, or to engineer desirable sound characteristics into them.

Available for use in both individual and group jury evaluations, jury evaluation software lets you control sound characteristics precisely, tally responses and detect errors in real time, and statistically analyse jury responses. The software incorporates methods most commonly used in jury evaluation into a software environment that allows easy customization and independent development of evaluation and analysis methods.