Test-battery of auditory capabilities

While the literature stresses the importance of expert panels and of training in evaluating sound-quality attributes, the abilities of experts, and the benefits of long-term training, have typically only been investigated for a very limited range of tasks (e.g. naming timbral qualities). By contrast, the goal of the present investigation is to develop a test battery for a wide range of auditory capabilities in order to assess individual listeners. All tasks have been set up in an objective format (e.g. identifying which of three sound samples is different) that is suited for studying both simple (e.g. loudness, pitch, or interaural level discrimination) and complex (e.g.spectral-shape discrimination) auditory phenomena. A number of tasks were selected and implemented using specialized signal-processing algorithms. Data were then collected on 24 listeners who had been considered for participation in an expert listening panel for evaluating the sound quality of hi-fi audio systems. These data were compared to a conventional selection procedure, and listeners who were accepted for the panel were contrasted with those who were rejected. Furthermore, the test battery data were related to the performance of the listeners when judging the degradation in quality produced by audio codecs. (Center contract)