Sound Quality Design as an Issue of Interactive Context

When sound quality has to be evaluated a number of difficulties arise. Although there are various attempts of evaluating it, there is no definitive approach which covers the diverse requirements with respect to subjective importance. Since the subjective evaluation will be influenced by different modifiers, the methods in question have to be adapted necessarily to the various objectives that are related to certain subjective as well as to physical, psycho-acoustic, and socio-acoustic variables. The evaluation of the perception of acoustic environments needs an interactive, integrating, transdisciplinary concept. What will to be discussed up front are contextual interdependencies, socio-acoustic, and psychological methods, the significance of the modifiers within the guided decision-making process as well as the importance of sensorial modifiers as they make up the foundation of the research process. In many studies focusing on sound quality the observation of context in general becomes an issue if the experimental setup or the instruction or even the respective stages of the experiment are regarded as contextual, i.e. sound evaluation or the evaluation of product-related sound quality always implies evaluation of lifestyles depending upon acceptance and therefore intimately related to the daily routine of the tested individual. evaluations of sounds are highly sensitive contextually, but at present there is no usage-oriented experimental instruction which sufficiently defines the contextual rapport within a given sound evaluation setup. the concept of sound quality evaluation needs to be broadened to integrate a subjective and psycho-social approach. a concept and procedure will be introduced for benchmarking and target sound development in context to appropriately evaluate the sound of the corporate identity introduction