Perceived loudness of time-varying sounds is set by short-time peak values.

Evidence

So far we have reviewed the perception of loudness caused by tone bursts. Speech and music are composed of sounds whose spectrum changes all the time. The perceived loudness can thus be expected to change all the time. However, it has been found that the loudness of such timevarying sounds seems to be the result of a short-time integration of sound power followed by a processing of the peak values by another mechanism. The perceived loudness is thus defined by loudness peak values. For example, a sound, in which 200-ms sound bursts alternate with 200-ms pauses is perceived to have loudness similar to a corresponding continuous sound. — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 1177

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Connects to temporal integration and peak-picking models of perception; parallels the loudness/psychoacoustics material in earlier chapters of this same book.

Related

• Time-varying sound loudness is set by integrated loudness peaks, not moment-to-moment level (similarity 0.97)
• Loudness perception takes time to develop and so can be interrupted by later sounds (similarity 0.89)
• Perceived loudness depends on frequency content and duration, not just sound pressure level (similarity 0.88)
• Short sounds decay in perceived loudness faster than long sounds. (similarity 0.88)
• Hearing forms loudness by integrating sound energy over about 100-200 ms (similarity 0.87)
• Sounds shorter than 200 ms are perceived quieter, scaled to burst length (similarity 0.87)
• Sustained sound beyond about 200 ms adds no further loudness (similarity 0.87)
• Perceived loudness integrates sound over a roughly one-second running window (similarity 0.86)
• Perceived loudness of time-varying sounds tracks near-peak levels, not averages (similarity 0.85)
• Hearing integrates sound intensity over a fixed 200 ms window (similarity 0.85)
• Loudness models need 100-200 ms time constants to capture temporal integration and post-masking. (similarity 0.85)
• Loudness depends on more than physical sound intensity alone (similarity 0.84)
• Static loudness models fail on time-variant sounds, motivating frame-based temporal integration models (similarity 0.84)
• Loudness develops over time after a sound ends, so later noise can interrupt it (similarity 0.84)
• Auditory attention requires temporal variation in any sound signal (similarity 0.84)