Sound Quality Evaluation of Hand-Held Power Tools

Sound quality evaluation in the context of product sound quality has been addressed and investigated on hand-held power tools. Out of those, power drills, hand-held circular saws and jigsaws have been chosen as the products of interest. A series of listening tests has been conducted in order to ascertain how people perceive not only the sound emitted by these devices in operation, but also certain properties of the devices themselves, such as their quality, safety of handling, robustness, proper functioning and others. The values of objective parameters describing the sounds of these devices were obtained. Well known parameters such as loudness, sharpness and roughness were used, and certain new parameters were defined. Linear regression models were made for subjective parameters describing the perception of the devices using relevant objective parameters as an attempt to model the subjective grades obtained through listening tests and to predict such grades for future products to be included in the investigation. Based on individual parameters, a single-number overall grade was defined.