The Sounds of Household Appliances and its Relationship with the Quality of Life

摘要

We use various sort of household appliances in our daily life. Statistics point out that 98%of households have a refrigerator and 92% of households have a washing machine inGermany. Most of them runs for several minutes or hours per day. For example therefrigerator runs 24 hours per day or dishwasher runs 2 or 3 hours per day. Thereforetheir sound have an important influence on our daily life quality. Within the framework ofEUREKA project 8684 Sound Quality, the sounds of various household products wereanalyzed and evaluated. The aim is to develop a sound label which characterize theperceptual features of the sound of the household appliances. Such kind of sound labelhelps and gives an orientation to the users to compare different machines with regard totheir sound quality. Psychoacoustical properties are useful to develop a sound label.However there are various challenges regarding the optimal measurement environment,the measurement setup and the operating condition. The aims of this study are tosummarize the results of investigations, which were conducted on three different householdappliances and discuss the future milestones on the way to a sound label.