A test battery measuring auditory capabilities of listening panels

While the literature stresses the importance of expert panels and of training in evaluating sound-quality attributes, the abilities of experts have typically only been investigated for a very limited range of tasks (e.g. naming timbral qualities). It is therefore the aim of this study to develop a battery of tests covering a larger range of auditory capabilities in order to assess individual listeners. The format of all tests is kept as 'objective' as possible by using a three-alternative forced-choice paradigm in which the subject must choose which of the sound samples is different, thus keeping the instruction to the subjects simple and common for all tests. Both basic (e.g. frequency discrimination) and complex (e.g. profile analysis) psychoacoustic tests are covered in the battery and a threshold of discrimination or detection is obtained for each test. Data were collected on 24 listeners who had been recruited for participation in an expert listening panel for evaluating the sound quality of hi-fi audio systems. The test battery data were related to the actual performance of the listeners when judging the degradation in quality produced by audio codecs.