RESPONSE

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Psychoacoustics / Electroacoustics

The response of a device or system is the motion (or other output) resulting from excitation (by a stimulus) under specified conditions. A qualifying adjective is usually prefixed to the term (e.g., FREQUENCY RESPONSE, amplitude response, TRANSIENT RESPONSE, etc.) to indicate the type of response under consideration. See also: LINEAR.

The human response to auditory stimuli is studied by PSYCHOACOUSTICS where the response is often plotted on the vertical axis against the magnitude of the stimulus on the horizontal axis (see EQUAL LOUDNESS CONTOURS).

When the stimulus is NOISE, the human response is often expressed as some form of annoyance and measured similarly, as in the COMMUNITY NOISE EQUIVALENT LEVEL and the NOISE AND NUMBER INDEX.

Compare: SOUND INTRUSION, SOUND PHOBIA.

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