I-DEAS Sound Quality Engineering™

for obtaining desirable product sound characteristics

Enhancing Perceptions of
Product Quality
Studies have established that consumers
identify sound as a major criteria in helping
them to develop their impressions of the
overall quality of a product. Sound quality
has been an important issue in the automo-
tive industry for decades, but is now also a
growing concern for manufacturers of
consumer appliances, office equipment,
power tools, marine equipment, off-high-
way construction vehicles, farm equipment,
and other products. Achieving good sound
quality is a much more sophisticated pro-
cess than simply determining that a mea-
sured sound is “too loud.” This process
goes beyond basic sound level reduction to
also include engineering the product to
eliminate specific, objectionable sounds and
yet retain appropriate, desirable sounds.
I-DEAS Sound Quality Engineering™ soft-
ware enables you to measure and thor-
oughly analyze the audio “signatures” in a
real-world mode. Once the unacceptable
features of these sounds have been identi- I-DEAS Sound Quality Engineering software enables you to measure and
fied, by employing quantitative metrics or thoroughly analyze the audio “signatures” of your products.
qualitative jury listening studies, you can
then set specific targets for a more desirable
sound. Other I-DEAS products complement
I-DEAS Sound Quality Engineering by
enabling the engineer to use both simula-
display, editing, math operations, and other • Internal DAT drive: all two-channel
tion models and test data to develop modi-
utilities. It provides CD-quality digital audio DATs conforming to DAT recording
fications to improve the overall sound
recordings of sound data from the built-in standards.
quality and to achieve the ultimate objective
analog or digital inputs of the workstation • Read and write support is provided for
of designing the desired sound characteris-
or from its internal DAT drive. The Re- AIFF, AIFF-C, WAV, AU, I-DEAS ADF, and
tics into the product.
corder/Editor features include: universal files.
The I-DEAS Sound Quality Engineering • Multiple sounds of any length can be • Input and output calibrations ensure that
software is comprised of five modules efficiently processed. sounds are replayed at their correctly
containing tools to diagnose sound prob- • Sound data may be recorded/transferred recorded levels. Internal digital equalization
lems and produce desirable design targets. using any of the following of the output signals provides true repro-
workstation facilities: duction of binaurally recorded signals.
Recorder/Editor • Unlimited files may be open simulta-
• Analog inputs: 2 sound channels plus
The Recorder/Editor module delivers the neously in separate windows and data may
two tachometer channels.
core functionality, providing a windows- • Digital inputs: AES/EBU, SP-DIF be cut, copied, and pasted between them.
style user interface for recording, playback, standards.

Application Product: Test 1

• Comprehensive graphical editing and
math functions include mix, fade, envelope,
and draw.
• 2D real-time display and spectral process-
ing synchronized with audio playback
includes the following features:
• Frequency Axis Modes:
Linear, Log, Order.
• Band Types: Narrow Band, 1/n Octave.
• Amplitude Weighting: Lin, A,B,C,D.
• Display types: Wire, Plates, Shaded
Plates, Differenced (bars for octave).
• FFT block sizes: 512 to 32,678 in
powers of 2.
• Windows: Hanning, Random and
Sine, Flattop.
• Real-time display with no missing data.
• Off-line calculation with
unlimited overlap.
• 3D Waterfall display features include:
• Surface plot.
• Duplication of 2D displays in 3D
waterfall format. ‘Z’-axis units in time,
samples or RPM.
• Rectilinear 3D planes.
• 3-axis rotation and plane zoom, for the
rectilinear display, under mouse control
and perspective option.
• 2 modes of 3D display are supported:
Real-time display: Spectra flow down the
plane and disappear at the front.
• Off-line display: Static 3D display of all
or part of the sound file data controlled
by a Z-axis pan/zoom control. During
playback a cursor box moves over the
data and the spectra at the current play
cursor position changes color.
• Spectrograms, also known as color
sonograms, provide a wealth of information
in a single display. Amplitude is presented
as color with the Y axis showing frequency
and the X-axis RPM or time. The graph can
be rotated and viewed from any position.
The stacked display format places the
spectrogram above the time history display
of the sound data.
Flexible and comprehensive cursor func-
tions allow simultaneous display of ampli-
tude, frequency, order, RPM and time
information.
• A comparative display facility enables two
sounds to be compared with display types
of average spectrum and band, total, mul-
tiple orders, or metrics.
• Play list allows a number of files and
silences to be sequenced into an audio
presentation. This can be used for jury
evaluations or recorded to DAT for remote
playing.
Transient Applications
Transient data can be analyzed using a
signal processing toolkit including Wavelet
and Vold-Kalman filter methods.
Real-Time Filter
The Real-time Filter module allows you to
apply an unlimited number of stereo digital
filters per sound and to modify the filter
parameters while the sound is playing.
• Low, high, and band cut/boost in infinite
impulse response (IIR) format can be
placed at any frequency simply by dragging
the appropriate icon onto the display panel.
• Finite impulse response (FIR) filters of
arbitrary shape can be defined by drawing
with the mouse or importing from I-DEAS
ADF, universal or spreadsheet text files.
• Filters can be nominally fixed frequency
or locked to a rotational order. The cut/
boost of the order tracked filters can be
constant or profiled to simulate the removal
of a resonance.
• Additional features for fixed frequency
applications include the use of high-order
filters, critical band wide filters, band-pass
filters, and off-line filtering for more com-
plex filter shapes.
• Tracked and fixed filters can be used
simultaneously. IIR filters can be profiled for
amplitude control vs. RPM or Time either by
drawing or tabular entry.
Performer
The Performer module provides sophisti-
cated capabilities for the rapid comparison
of individual or various combinations of
sounds.
• Synchronization can be based on either
time or RPM.
• Up to 12 sounds can be grouped into a
single preset file and played either individu-
ally or simultaneously. The function keys,
F1-F12, can be used for playback of sounds.
• Selected sound can be synchronized to
retain relative phasing.
• The advanced looping capability provides
for glitch-free playback of even the shortest
sounds.
Designer
The Designer module is a sound modifica-
tion and synthesis capability consisting of
many tools used to understand and modify
the complex structures in recorded sound.
• Time Domain Averaging tools allow the
extraction of harmonic components from
the total sound and editing of individual
harmonics. Harmonics can be separated
into groups such as odd, even, and half
order.
• Spectral editing of the averaged wave
form is accomplished by mouse clicking
and dragging the harmonics in the spectral
display.
Metrics
The Metrics module contains quantitative
tools for ranking sounds according to
perception-based criteria.
• In addition to supplying the most com-
monly used metrics, open architecture
features are also available to allow users to
develop and include their own metric
algorithms in C.
• The following standard metrics are
included:
• Loudness (ISO 532B) in Phons
and Sones
• Sound Pressure Level
Application Product: Test 2
 • Speech Interference Level
• Spectrum Balance
• Composite Rating of Preference
• Intelligibility (Articulation Index)
• Sharpness
• Tonality
• Pitch strength
• Kurtosis
• Roughness
• Fluctuation Strength
• Time Varying
• Loudness N10
(percentile loudness statistic)
• Specific Loudness
• Metric results can be displayed as 2D
graphics and written to both ASCII and
I-DEAS Test ADF files.

Prerequisite
None

I-DEAS Sound Quality Engineering, I-DEAS, and I-DEAS Master Series are trademarks, and SDRC is a registered trademark of
Structural Dynamics Research Corporation. All other trademarks and registered trademarks belong to their respective holders.
For more information, contact your local SDRC representative, call 1-800-848-7372, or visit our website at: www.sdrc.com Application Product: Test 3