AQuA is a simple but powerful tool to provide perceptual voice quality testing and audio file quality comparison.
The human ear is a non-linear system, which produces an effect named masking. Masking occurs on hearing a message against a noisy background or masking sounds. AQuA perceptual model is based on research of four different scientists who discovered influence of different frequency bands (the so-called critical bands) to human perception.
The value of spectrum energy in frequency bands can be used for different purposes; one of which is the sound signal quality estimation. However, using only critical bands discovered by one scientist does not allow getting an estimation objective enough, since they show only one of the aspects of perception or speech production. AQuA can determine energy in various critical bands as well as in logarithmic and resonator bands, that allows taking into account more properties of hearing and speech processing.