Sensory analysis of sound (in telecommunications)

Nick Zacharov & Gaëtan Lorho

Nokia Corporation

Visiokatu 1, 33721 Tampere, Finland

 nick.zacharovnokia.com

As mobile telecommunications devices continue to evolve, their audio functionality continues to increase significantly. With each new audio feature come associated perceptual requirements to ensure satisfactory user experience. Such audio features include polyphonic ring tones (MIDI), music players (e.g. MP3), wideband speech communications and so forth. Sensory profiling was originally adapted to studies of audio and applied to a number of applications such a communication speech quality, spatial sound reproduction and so forth. However, due to the pressures of the commercial telecommunications industry highly effective sensory analysis methods are still needed to provide means of assessment of the many 10’s of different product audio applications.

In this paper we briefly review our early applications of sensory analysis of sound in mobile telecommunications. A summary of, the relatively time intensive, audio applications categories already studied is reviewed, presenting the benefits and limitations of the audio descriptive analysis and mapping method. Bearing in mind the pressures of mobile telecommunications industry, the limitations for widespread application of these methods in our industry is analyzed with the aim of developing more effective approaches.

The issues of validating a consensus descriptive lexicon are examined with the aim of improving our approach. This topic is presented with respect to subject reliability, agreement and discriminative skills resulting in a more rigorous lexicon development approach including evaluation of panel member performance.

Based upon this critical analysis and cooperation with members of the food science community, more effective sensory analysis methods are now being applied that allows for far more effective and rapid consensus lexicon development and application to products evaluations. A recent example of sound sensory analysis study comparing consensus vocabulary development and individual vocabulary development (free choice profiling type) methods is presented.

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