Optimal Pairwise Comparison Procedures for Subjective Evaluation

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Webb, Jack, Picinali, Lorenzo
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Webb, Jack
Picinali, Lorenzo
author_facet Webb, Jack
Picinali, Lorenzo
contents Audio signal processing algorithms are frequently assessed through subjective listening tests in which participants directly score degraded signals on a unidimensional numerical scale. However, this approach is susceptible to inconsistencies in scale calibration between assessors. Pairwise comparisons between degraded signals offer a more intuitive alternative, eliciting the relative scores of candidate signals with lower measurement error and reduced participant fatigue. Yet, due to the quadratic growth of the number of necessary comparisons, a complete set of pairwise comparisons becomes unfeasible for large datasets. This paper compares pairwise comparison procedures to identify the most efficient methods for approximating true quality scores with minimal comparisons. A novel sampling procedure is proposed and benchmarked against state-of-the-art methods on simulated datasets. Bayesian sampling produces the most robust score estimates among previously established methods, while the proposed procedure consistently converges fastest on the underlying ranking with comparable score accuracy.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_17840
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Optimal Pairwise Comparison Procedures for Subjective Evaluation
Webb, Jack
Picinali, Lorenzo
Audio and Speech Processing
Audio signal processing algorithms are frequently assessed through subjective listening tests in which participants directly score degraded signals on a unidimensional numerical scale. However, this approach is susceptible to inconsistencies in scale calibration between assessors. Pairwise comparisons between degraded signals offer a more intuitive alternative, eliciting the relative scores of candidate signals with lower measurement error and reduced participant fatigue. Yet, due to the quadratic growth of the number of necessary comparisons, a complete set of pairwise comparisons becomes unfeasible for large datasets. This paper compares pairwise comparison procedures to identify the most efficient methods for approximating true quality scores with minimal comparisons. A novel sampling procedure is proposed and benchmarked against state-of-the-art methods on simulated datasets. Bayesian sampling produces the most robust score estimates among previously established methods, while the proposed procedure consistently converges fastest on the underlying ranking with comparable score accuracy.
title Optimal Pairwise Comparison Procedures for Subjective Evaluation
topic Audio and Speech Processing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.17840