Lee J., Joo J., Jeoung J., Lee J.

Until now, it has been considered that the noise from the home appliances has only negative effect for the consumer. This is resonable because the noise interfere the easy life of consumer in general. With the advent of sound quality activities, however, researchers in the field of acoustics have started to think that some noise have the positive effect also. Because the sound from the product furnishes information that the product operates well or not. Moreover, sometimes, consumer has a good feeling from the sound. The sound of vaccum cleaner is a good example for that kind of positive effect. Usually, consumer doesn¡¯t want the vaccum cleaner that generates too low sound, because it seems to be out of order. In this research, the sound of a vaccum cleaner has investigated by employing both subjective and objective analysis to find the optimum level and pattern. The 30 sound samples, 10 original sounds and 20 modified sound, have been evaluated by 50 jurors for each contry, Korea, Germany, and France. According to the results of the jury evaluation and the physical analyses, in this paper, the optimum level and pattern of the vaccum cleaner are suggested through the Response Surface Method.