Jury evaluation of driver impact sound quality

The optimisation of sound quality has become vital to the design of consumer products particularly in sports goods where manufacturers are limited in the enhancements they can make to products to differentiate themselves from competitors. This is a result of more stringent regulations being imposed by governing bodies to preserve the importance of physical endeavour rather than technological enhancement of equipment. Previous studies have examined which attributes of impact sounds produced by sports equipment contribute most to players’ perceptions of ‘feel’ and sound quality. However there has been no study that compares the different methods for conducting these studies and determines which is the most appropriate. The purpose of this study was to investigate the various methods of collecting objective and subjective data to better understand how sounds in golf are perceived and how that contributes to perceptions of product quality. This study could advise sports goods manufacturers how to perform effective sound quality studies for new products. Further studies are needed to determine exactly which sensory system contributes most to the perception of overall product quality.