The effect of signal type on the loudness discomfort level.
Loudness discomfort levels (LDL's) were obtained on 19 normal-hearing subjects with 18 different stimuli using a simple up-down adaptive procedure. The stimuli included five pure tones, five one-third octave bands of noise, five one-third octave bands of filtered multi-talker babble, wide-band noise, spondaic words, and sentences. Results indicated there was no significant difference among the three frequency-specific stimuli. However, a significant frequency effect was found. LDL's for the two speech stimuli and wide-band noise were not significantly different and were similar to values for signals in the 500 to 4000 Hz region. Although differences among mean LDL's for the various signals were quite small, large intrasubject variability among the signal types and across frequency was observed. This fact would seem to preclude the conclusion that equivalent LDL's would be obtained on an individual regardless of the type of stimulus.
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D006801:Humans; D008144:Loudness Perception; D011571:Psychoacoustics