Impulsive Sounds in Printers

Impulsive sounds generated by printers can degrade user experience by their disruptive nature. Impulsiveness is a dimension of the human experience of sound like loudness, roughness and tonality. Since an objective measurement for impulsive sound events would be useful to printer design and development, this paper explores various impulsiveness metrics for printer noise events. Impulsiveness metrics formed from sound intensity and loudness are compared to one another. The metrics formed from loudness and specific loudness are found to best predict subjective scores of impulsiveness submitted by human subjects. The results suggest that a loudness- or specific loudness-based impulsiveness metric will be useful for printer design and development.