Consumers historically equated vacuum cleaner loudness with power.

Evidence

Most household appliances produce sound, either continuously or only when used actively. Continuous sounds should typically be almost silent, and they should not cause annoyance. In a device that is used occasionally, louder sounds may be acceptable. For example, a vacuum cleaner may be thought to be less effective if its sound is very soft. However, the sound of the vacuum cleaner should not have disturbing components, such as rattling or high-level, high-frequency sounds. The vacuum cleaner is an example of a product where the sound level of the device itself is decreasing with the evolution of vacuum cleaners. The first vacuum cleaners were really noisy, and very loud sound was an indication of high power. Fortunately, nowadays vacuum cleaners are more silent, and the association between loudness and assumed power is weaker. Consumers have learned that the vacuum cleaner motor can be both powerful and silent, and they pay more attention to the sounds created by the suction of air and by particles entering the suction tube. — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 2499

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• CANDY: A shareable nugget: loud vacuum cleaners once sounded powerful, but consumers have unlearned that association.
• XREF: A nice concrete example of how perceived sound quality is culturally learned — echoes the reader’s notes on soundscape and learned meanings of sounds.