Equal-loudness contours vary greatly across individual listeners

Evidence

The equal-loudness contours describe a characteristic of our hearing systems that is always there and unchanged whether we are at a live musical performance, having a conversation, or listening to music or movies at home. They are part of the human listener, not something that needs to be “corrected” for, as some have mistakenly believed. They are typically measured using pure tones at different frequencies that are compared to a reference tone at 1 kHz and adjusted to be equally loud. It is a simple process using simple sounds, and the real question is the extent to which these curves relate to the complex continuous spectra of music. It is an issue to which there is no definitive answer. — Toole, Floyd E, Sound reproduction- the acoustics and…, 909 (#contradicts, via linked claim)

Loudness is a suprathreshold percept that provides insight into the status of the entire auditory pathway. Individuals with matched thresholds can show individual variability in their loudness perception that is currently not well understood. As a means to analyze and model listener variability, we introduce the multi-category psychometric function (MCPF), a novel representation for categorical data that fully describes the probabilistic relationship between stimulus level and categorical-loudness perception. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 2509 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Auditory perception of the same physical sound varies between individuals; A-weighted decibels are a rough practical approximation of perceived loudness — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 988; Impulse response measurements can misrepresent what listeners actually hear (+7 more)

Related

• Auditory perception of the same physical sound varies between individuals (similarity 0.95)
• Listeners with identical hearing thresholds differ in suprathreshold loudness perception (similarity 0.94)
• Loudness perception is probabilistic, with a response distribution at each stimulus level. (similarity 0.91)
• People with identical audiometric thresholds can perceive loudness differently. (similarity 0.90)
• Equal-loudness contours are a fixed property of human hearing (similarity 0.90)
• Equal-loudness contour data have been repeatedly revised and corrected (similarity 0.87)
• Loudness judgments at a fixed level vary probabilistically across categories (similarity 0.85)
• Loudness response variability is informative signal, not noise to discard (similarity 0.85)
• Loudness perception involves central mechanisms beyond cochlear vibration (similarity 0.84)
• Categorical loudness data is probabilistic, not reducible to a median response curve. (similarity 0.83)
• Equal-loudness contours reflect outer and middle ear amplification characteristics. (similarity 0.83)
• Each listener shows a stable, idiosyncratic weighting of frequency bands (similarity 0.83)
• Boundary-curve slope in a categorical loudness function encodes perceptual category certainty (similarity 0.81)
• Different equal-loudness contour studies disagree substantially in shape (similarity 0.81)
• A-weighted decibels are a rough practical approximation of perceived loudness (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Equal-loudness contours are a fixed property of human hearing #contradicts (0.95) — Toole, Floyd E, Sound reproduction- the acoustics and…, 909
• Listeners with identical hearing thresholds differ in suprathreshold loudness perception #corroborates (0.90) — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 2509
• Hearing thresholds vary individually but share a common perceptual order #qualifies (0.75)