A comparison of impulsive noise metrics

Impulsive sounds are transient acoustic events that can draw undesirable attention because of their abrupt nature, for example sounds produced by weights dropping onto floors in buildings. A metric that represents human experience of these sounds can guide efforts to mitigate them. This paper investigates metrics developed for impulsive sounds generated by weight or ball drops and by IT equipment. The metric for IT equipment is an impulsiveness metric formulated with psychoacoustic bands and loudness descriptions. The metric for weight or ball drops is the fast time-weighted sound pressure level implemented with various filtering schemes. The ability of the metrics in predicting subjective human experience of IT equipment transients is compared. Metric values for sounds generated by ball drops onto various floor assemblies on a concrete slab are compared.