Investigation of preferred playback volume according to music genre using listening test

Music of various genres is selected according to the preference of the individual and it is played using various types of devices. Different genres of music have their own acoustic characteristics and affect the state of music being played. Especially, it is expected that the preferred volume of played music will be greatly affected. To confirm this phenomenon, a listening test was used. I used five kinds of genres (classical, pop, ballad, dance, hip-hop) which are considered to be representative of various music genres. One representative song was selected from each of the selected genres, and a part was extracted from the selected songs and used in the test. In the experiment, we used two methods to check the preferred playback volume of music. The first is that the subject directly adjusts the volume. Inside the test room, we used a device to control the volume of the played music in the test room, and the volume control was progressed for each genre according to the user's preference. The second method is to use music that the experimenter manipulated the volume at regular intervals. The sound source of a part extracted from the representative music was made into revised music whose reproduction volume value was adjusted using the music editing software 'Adobe Audition'. A modified music with nine different levels per song was produced and used for the experiment. 9 sound sources are produced in the range of 40 ∼ 80dB with 5dB difference. The sound source was sequentially reproduced so that the volume gradually increased and then decreased again like audiometry.