For acoustic benchmarking and sound quality assessment, the LMS Test.Lab platform supports sound engineers for objective and subjective evaluation. Psycho-acoustics metrics include loudness, sharpness, roughness and fluctuation strength.
Those metrics are complemented with others indexes used for acoustic comfort qualification, such as articulation index or speech interference. In addition, algorithms help detect prominent tones and modulations. Results can be processed in real-time or offline, depending on user requirements and metrics type.
In the troubleshooting phase, the LMS Test.Lab Replay & Filter module provides sound engineers with a very powerful filtering-during-replay tool. This tool offers a proven and effective method to immediately and precisely detect annoying sound components. For sound replay in the field, a standard soundcard is sufficient. For listening sessions that require aurally-accurate, i.e. calibrated and equalized sound reproduction, LMS supports specific analogue and digital 3rd party replay hardware. Products of the LMS SCADAS acquisition system family are compatible with any kind of digital or analogue binaural head.
For convenient sound quality modeling or fine-tuning at any stage of the product development process, LMS Test.Lab Sound Diagnosis provides a complete, unique and highly interactive environment that helps sound engineers create and quantify the exact sound they are looking for. Engineers can evaluate the human perception of the recorded sound through a large range of global and tracked psycho-acoustic metrics on user-defined segments of the recorded time histories. After spectral analysis, the main origin of the sound characteristics can be diagnosed starting from any type of display. LMS Test.Lab Sound Diagnosis lets users listen to multiple data traces and, at the same time, analyze sounds with real-time filtering and metrics calculation. An unlimited number of filters can be applied interactively. Data from different measurement runs can be organized and combined for batch processing. The selection and processing parameters from any interactive sound diagnosis session can be saved as template procedure to speed-up future analysis.
Besides offering increased test efficiency and data consistency, LMS Test.Lab Sound Diagnosis is a reliable tool to evaluate sound quality in relation to other sound and vibration performance attributes by permitting to run multiple sound and vibration measurements, such as spectra, orders, or sound levels, in parallel. It integrates sound quality evaluation into the overall noise and vibration testing processes.
You know it’s a Harley as soon as you hear it, before you even see it. The throaty pounding and off-centered drumming beat are part of the signature sound that uniquely defines the persona of the machine and clearly differentiates the manufacturer from its competitors. Buyers don’t just want transportation to get from one place to another. They want a riding experience, a big part of which is the classic sound of the bike. 
Although the closing sound of a car door is objectively not related to the intrinsic qualities of the vehicle, it is an important subjective parameter for vehicle evaluation. This closing sound can emphasize the impression of a solid, rockproof car body or can draw the attention to a rather cheap, flimsy vehicle. Several other adjectives can be used to describe the closing sound, which is certainly, often unconsciously, an element that improves or lowers the global image of the vehicle. 
Arctic Cat is one of the early pioneers in the power sports industry and has firmly established itself as a leading manufacturer of these vehicles. Plans are to double its international business over the next three years, and for the first time ATV sales now account for more than half of the company’s total sales. Unlike competitors seeing flat sales or downturns, Arctic Cat has continued to gain market share in the ATV segment every year since it started selling these popular vehicles.
Sound Engineering becomes increasingly important in a wide range of applications. Its interest ranges from the acoustical feedback generated by an electrical shaver, to the reduction of tonal components in turbojet aircraft. Sound can be an unwanted as well as a desirable product attribute. It can be a factor of discomfort (high interior car noise during driving) as well as a carrier of information(alarm signals) or an element of speech privacy. The sound generated by a product can also be an important factor in the customer perception of the product.
