Industry-oriented software-based system for quality evaluation of vehicle audio environments

A new set of integrated software tools are proposed for the evaluation of vehicle audio quality for industrial purposes, taking advantage of the auralization approach that allows to simulate the binaural listening experience outside the cockpit. Two main cooperating tools are implemented. The first fulfills the function of acquiring relevant data for system modeling and for canceling the undesired effects of the acquisition chain. The second offers a user-friendly interface for real-time simulation of different car audio systems and the consequent evaluation of both objective and subjective performances. In the latter case, the listening procedure is directly experienced at the PC workplace, leading to a significant simplification of the audio-quality assessing task for comparing the selected systems. Moreover, such kind of subjective evaluation allowed to validate the proposed approach through a complete set of experiments (developed by means of a dedicated software environment) based on appropriate ITU recommendations.