It was attempted to find a pleasant sig-
nal for automated audio system cali-
bration through play back. A simple
use case was defined where the time
of arrival (TOA) should be estimated
from one source to receiver in cor-
rupting noise and reverberation. Inter-
views with experts and research were
used to determine necessary character-
istics of a possible calibration signal. A
self designed sound and other suitable
sounds were rated in a listening exper-
iment. The winner was tested in a vir-
tual testing framework against a tra-
ditional signal. The traditional signal
outperformed the pleasant one. Meth-
ods were applied to modify the pleas-
ant signal in order to increase its per-
formance. It was hypothesised that
a wide spectral bandwidth or at least
high frequencies are crucial for TOA
estimation. High frequency pseudo-
random noise was added to the pleas-
ant signal according to and beyond its
masking curves with an increase of
TOA estimation performance but a de-
crease of perceptual quality.