do you Believe thAt?

The paper presents some results of an outstanding research project aiming to evaluate whether the equivalent continuous A-weighted sound pressure level (LAeq) is an adequate parameter to describe the annoyance elicited by a sound and therefore suitable to assess the interior noise of an earth moving machine. The results showed that when signals with different overall levels are compared, the subjective response seems to be primary affected by the amplitude of the sound, this feature hiding the dependence on other signal characteristics. However, none of tested objective overall parameters fully complied with the subjective judgement, confirming that further investigations in the time and/or frequency domain turn out to be necessary.