Subjective loudness and annoyance of filtered N-wave sonic booms.
The contribution of the "infrasonic" low-frequency content of sonic boom N waves to subjective loudness and annoyance has been investigated. An extended low-frequency response loudspeaker-driven simulation booth was employed, with computer-generated input test signals. For test N waves of 1 ms rise time and 150 ms duration, frequencies below 25 and 50 Hz, respectively, were cut off by digital filters simulating simple RC circuits. The filtered signal amplitude was adjusted versus the amplitude (48 Pa) of a reference unfiltered N wave (effective low-frequency cutoff approximately 0.1 Hz) until the two sounded equally loud (first experiment) or equally annoying (second experiment). The amplitude differences for equality were very slight: less than 0.6 dB at most. Surprisingly, while loss of the low frequencies slightly decreased the loudness, it slightly increased the annoyance.
D006801:Humans; D008144:Loudness Perception; D008297:Male; D009622:Noise; D011571:Psychoacoustics