Active sensory tuning of windnoise using a genetic algorithm

The subjective tuning of multidimensional systems is considered. Listener preference for certain attributes of sound over others involves multiple options, costs, and payoffs, and may require complex strategies to arrive at an optimal solution. When the complexity of such strategies becomes excessive, listeners adopt simpler strategies that may lead to poor, but achievable, solutions. Active sensory tuning (AST) is aimed at providing the listener an efficient search strategy that yields good solutions within reasonable time bounds. Within an engineering context, AST provides a direct link between the human user and the engineer's design parameters whereby the user can tune the design to their desired goal. This contrasts with much simpler, techniques whereby the user can rank their preference but the engineer must interpret such rankings with respect to the selected parameters.