Investigation of measuring methods to determine an individual loudness value based on real audio data

Diploma thesis

Frequently different audio sources that contains language or music should be compared concerning their loudness. The measure of the loudness depends on different factors: Frequencies, the temporal duration of the measurement and also hear-psychological factors.

The problem constitutes a row of loudness values with time-variant signals (such as language or music) for which only one representative value be derived. The determined value should reflect precisely the feeling of human loudness in the considered period.

By using a detailed literature search, the methods of loudness calculations in current scientific literature will be investigated including the extent to which these investigations have been used in norms and standards successfully. The forecasted methods for real audio sources (e.g., radio, CD, telephone, etc.) will be compared with the results of psychoacoustic hearings which is accomplished in the interior of a KFZ. In order to improve the loudness model’s resulting accuracy, possible modification of various model parameters will be suggested. The purpose is to derive, separately with strongly intermittent sounds, a representative singular value for the loudness felt.