Mandarin Chinese translation of the ISO-12913 soundscape attributes to investigate the mechanism of soundscape perception in urban open spaces

This study is part of a global collaboration to translate the soundscape attributes proposed in ISO/TS 12913-2:2018, which aims to standardise soundscape research globally. Cross-referencing results from two independent expert panels produced a set of eight soundscape attributes that were subsequently experimentally verified, forming a reliable questionnaire for soundscape characterisation in Mandarin Chinese. Employing the as-developed questionnaire, ex situ auditory-only soundscape perception experiments were carried out with 27 soundscape recordings from urban open spaces in the United Kingdom. The soundscape perception scale was used to evaluate participants' experiences, which were then projected into two dimensions of soundscape perception, pleasantness and eventfulness, following protocols from ISO 12913-3:2019. Physical and psychoacoustic parameters, as well as the characteristics of the sound sources, were extracted from the recordings. These parameters were used together to describe the soundscape characteristics of the recordings. Principal component analysis revealed that, when individuals are exposed to urban open spaces, the salient sound source becomes the foreground focus of attention, informing them to perceive the soundscape. Beyond this, perception stimulation is further based on the acoustic characteristics of the soundscape. Regression analysis investigated factors for pleasantness and eventfulness. For pleasantness, the overall S95 had a significant negative effect while birdsong was beneficial. With regard to eventfulness, mechanical sound had a detrimental impact, while the number of salient sound source types and the overall F50 had a positive impact. Furthermore, this study founds that certain types of sound sources make the sound more recognisable as a foreground sound, thereby stimulating perception, while others may be ignored as background sounds but still contribute to the perception through their acoustic characteristics

Predictive Modelling of Complex Urban Soundscapes: Enabling an engineering approach to soundscape design

Conventional noise control methods typically limit their focus to the reduction of unwanted noise, ignoring the benets of positive sounds and struggling to reflect the totality of noise impacts. Modern approaches to achieve improved health outcomes and public satisfaction aim to incorporate the perception of an acoustic environment, an approach known as ‘soundscape’. When attempting to apply soundscape in practice, it is apparent that new methods of analysing soundscape perception in urban spaces are required; in particular, a predictive model of the users’ perceptual response to the acoustic environment is necessary. This thesis is intended to enable a move towards applying engineering approaches to soundscape design. This is achieved by developing predictive models of soundscape perception through empirical studies examining a large scale soundscape assessment database. The results are presented in three parts: first, the data collection protocol and modelling methods developed for this work are presented; the second part demonstrates an initial development and application of a predictive soundscape model; the final section expands upon this initial model with two empirical studies exploring the potential for additional information to be included in the model. This thesis begins by establishing a protocol for large scale soundscape data collection based on ISO 12913-2 and the creation of a database containing 1,318 responses paired with 693 binaural recordings collected in 13 locations in London and Venice. The first study then presents an initial development and application of a model designed to predict soundscape perception based on psychoacoustic analysis of the binaural recordings. Through the collection of an additional 571 binaural recordings during the COVID-19 lockdowns, sound level reductions at every location are seen, ranging from a reduction of 1.27 dB(A) in Regents Park Japan to 17.33 dB(A) in Piazza SanMarco, with an average reduction across all locations of 7.27 dB(A). Multi-level models were developed to predict the overall soundscape pleasantness (R2 = 0.85) and eventfulness (R2 = 0.715) of each location and applied to the lockdown recordings to determine how the soundscape perception likely changed. The results demonstrated that perception shifted toward less eventful soundscapes and to more pleasant soundscapes for previously traffic-dominated locations but not for human- and natural-dominated locations. The modelling process also demonstrated that contextual information was important for predicting pleasantness but not for predicting eventfulness. The next stage of the thesis considers a series of expansions to the initial model. The second piece of empirical work makes use of a dataset of recordings collected from a Wireless Acoustic Sensor Network (WASN) which includes sound source labels and annoyance ratings collected from 100 participants in an online listening study. A multilevel model was constructed using a combination of psychoacoustic metrics and sound source labels to predict perceived annoyance, achieving an R2 of 0.64 for predicting individual responses. The sound source information is demonstrated to be a crucial factor, as the relationship between roughness, impulsiveness, and tonality and the predicted annoyance varies as a function of the sound source label. The third piece of empirical work uses multilevel models to examine the extent to which personal factors influence soundscape perception. The findings suggest that personal factors, including psychological wellbeing, age, gender, and occupational status, account for approximately 1.4% of the variance for pleasantness and 3.9% for eventfulness, while the influence of the locations accounted for approximately 34% and 14%, respectively. Drawing from the experience gained working with urban soundscape data, a new method of analysing and presenting the soundscape perception of urban spaces is developed. This method inherently considers the variety of perceptions within a group and provides an open-source visualisation tool to facilitate a nuanced approach to soundscape assessment and design. Based on this empirical evidence, a framework is established for developing future predictive soundscape models which can be integrated into an engineering approach. At each stage, the results of these studies is discussed in terms of how it can contribute to a generalisable predictive soundscape model

Noise and Vibration Control in the Built Environment

With global urbanization rapidly rising and the increasing need of high-quality built environments, the requirement of achieving improved sound quality, both for outdoor and indoor environments, has received a lot of attention. This Special Issue collection reflects the current state of the art, with 12 papers covering environmental acoustics; the influence of soundscapes on people’s behavior; soundscape pleasantness estimation; tranquility; perceived quality of sonic environments; sound and vibration-related health complaints concerning tramways; and the disturbance of construction machines; as well as in building and room acoustics, including natural ventilation-enabling façade noise control devices; the effect of external shading devices; rating method of airborne sound insulation; water supply and drainage noise, and the effect of diffusive surfaces in auditoria. Some papers cover research on the engineering aspects of sound and vibration, such as sound propagation and noise control techniques, as well as perception aspects of sound, such as indoor acoustic comfort and environmental soundscapes. The book is prefaced by Prof. S Wu, entitled ‘Sustainable Urban Sound Environment’

The aural skills acquisition process of undergraduate electroacoustic (EA) music majors in the context of a new aural learning method

Thesis (D.M.A.)--Boston UniversityElectroacoustic (EA) musicians require aural skills that exist beyond tonality and meter; however, specialized ear training courses for EA music are rare in university and college music programs that offer EA studies (EaSt) in their curricula. Since 2005, this researcher has been developing and teaching EA aural training at a Canadian university in that was inspired by concepts from Auditory Scene Analysis (ASA) studies, primarily integration and segregation. In the 2009/10 academic year, the researcher conducted an action study with his intact EA aural training class of 25 first year undergraduate students majoring in EaSt for the purposes of better understanding and improving the students' aural skill acquisition process. and of refining the teaching and learning sequence. The action study was organized into four cycles of observation, critical reflection, and action, and focused on optimizing and autonomizing the skill acquisition process within the large, varied group. Actions were designed in response to critical reflection on emerging problems, evaluations of students' views about the process, their moods and attitudes, and measurements of students' achievements-with specific attention to eight EA-oriented skills and seven tonal and metric skills. Qualitative and quantitative data gathered from questionnaires, in-class surveys and tests, homework, and competence tests provided evidence of skill acquisition, primarily in loudness discrimination, timbral discrimination, tonal awareness, interval discrimination, meter discrimination, and descriptive ability. The most notable emerging problems in the skill acquisition process were related to the group's variety of ability levels, including imbalances in difficulty levels, in students' level of interest in the activities, and in the all-inclusive effectiveness of the training. The main transformational aspects of the action study were autonomization of the skill acquisition process at home through weekly reflective practice reports and developing a cooperative learning environment in the classroom through regular in-class discussion

A new methodology for modelling urban soundscapes: a psychometric revisitation of the current standard and a Bayesian approach for individual response prediction

Measuring how the urban sound environment is perceived by public space users, which is usually referred as urban soundscape, is a research field of particular in terest for a broad and multidisciplinary scientific community besides private and public agencies. The need for a tool to quantify soundscapes would provide much support to urban planning and design, so to public healthcare. Soundscape liter ature still does not show a unique strategy for addressing this topic. Soundscape definition, data collection, and analysis tools have been recently standardised and published in three respective ISO (International Organisation for Standardization) items. In particular, the third item of the ISO series defines the calculation of the soundscape experience of public space users by means of multiple Likert scales. In this thesis, with regards to the third item of the soundscape ISO series, the soundscape data analysis standard method is questioned and a correction paradigm is proposed. This thesis questiones the assumption of a point-wise superimposition match across the Likert scales used during the soundscape assessment task. In order to do that, the thesis presents a new method which introduces correction values, or metric, for adjusting the scales in accordance to the results of common scaling behaviours found across the investigated locations. In order to validate the results, the outcome of the new metric is used as tar get to predict the individual experience of soundscapes from the participants. In comparison to the current ISO output, the new correction values reveal to achievea better predictability in both linear and non-linear modelling by increasing the ac-curacy of prediction of individual responses up to 52.6% (8.3% higher than theaccuracy obtained with the standard method).Finally, the new metric is used to validate the collection of data samples acrossseveral locations on individual questionnaires responses. Models are trained, in aiterative way, on all the locations except the one used during the validation. Thisprocedure provides a strong validating framework for predicting individual subjectassessments belonging to locations totally unseen during the model training. The results show that the combination of the new metrics with the proposed modelling structure achieves good performance on individual responses across the dataset withan average accuracy above 54%. A new index for measuring the soundscape is fi-nally introduced based on the percentage of people agreeing on soundscape pleas-antness calculated from the new proposed metric and performing a r-squared valueequals to 0.87.The framework introduced is limited by cultural and linguistic factors. Indeed,different corrected metric space are expected to be found when data is collected from different countries or urban context. The current values found in this thesis areso expected to be valid in large British cities and eventually in international hub andcapital cities. In these scenarios the corrected metric would provide a more realisticand direction-invariant representation of how the urban soundscape is perceived compared to the current ISO tool, showing that some components in the circumplex model are perceived softer or stronger according to the dimension. Future research will need to understand better the limitations of this new ramework and to extendand compare it towards different urban, cultural, and linguistic contexts

Conceptual model of soundscape perception based on working behaviour in open-plan offices

The open-plan office is one of the most popular and preferred workspace arrangement options for employers today. The results of research in western countries show that listeners perceptions of the soundscape in open-plan offices are negative, due to reduced visual and acoustic privacy and uncontrolled sound levels. This can cause a significant decrease in work comfort and productivity. Several researchers have provided acoustic design solutions by performing adequate speech control through several solutions such as creating spacing between workstations, the use of acoustic dampening materials, insulation between workstations, and application of a noise masking system. The phenomenon of adopting an open-plan office has also hit offices in big cities in the world, including in Indonesia. The purpose of this paper is to further examine listeners perceptions of the soundscape in the case of open-plan offices in the local environment because the results are indicated to be different from similar cases in western countries, given the peculiarities of employee work behaviour which are influenced by individual experiences and social effects in the local environment are also different. For this reason, a comprehensive literature review method is needed that aims to investigate the relationship between soundscape perceptions and working behaviour in open-plan offices in the local environment and then to create an integrated conceptual model so that further researchers can evaluate the research related to these problems

Evaluation of product sound design within the context of emotion design and emotional branding

Thesis (Master)--Izmir Institute of Technology, Industrial Design, Izmir, 2005Includes bibliographical references (leaves: 111-122)Text in English; Abstract: Turkish and Englishxi, 127 leavesThe main purpose of this thesis is to set out the relationships between the work of product designers and the perceptions of costumers regarding the acceptability of product sounds. Product design that provides aesthetic appeal, pleasure and satisfaction can greatly influence success of a product. Sound as a cognitive artifact, plays a significant role in the cognition of product interaction and in shaping its identity. This thesis will review emotion theories end their application to sound design and sound quality modeling, the measurement of emotional responses to sound, and the relationship between psycho-acoustical sound descriptions and emotions. In addition to that, affects of sounds to emotionally significant brands will be evaluated so as to examine marketing values. One of the main purposes of chapter 2 is to prove knowledge about psychoacoustics; as product sound quality is a basic understanding of the underlying psychoacoustics phenomena. Perception; particularly sound perception and its elements are described during chapter 2. Starting with the description of sound wave and how our hear works, sound perception and auditory sensation is reviewed in continuation. In chapter 3, product sound quality concept and its evaluation principles are reviewed. Thus, in order to understand the coupling between the acoustic perception and the product design; knowledge of general principles for product sound quality are required. Chapter 4 can be considered as two main sections. .How does emotion act as a delighter in product design?. is examined to better understand customer and user experiences impacting pleasure-ability in first section. In the second section, emotion is evaluated through sound design. A qualitative evaluation is done so as to examine cognition and emotion in sound perception. Chapter 5 leads subject through emotional branding. Sounds that carry the brand.s identity are evaluated within. Sound design is re-evaluated as marketing strategy and examined with several instances. Keywords: Product sound design, psychoacoustics, product sound quality, emotion design, emotional branding

The validation of acoustic environment simulator to determine the relationship between sound objects and soundscape

An acoustic environment simulator is a system that facilitates acoustic environment composition by controlling the parameters of sound objects (both background and sound events), allowing the user to compose and compare soundscapes against their expectations. By using the acoustic environment simulator, data regarding parameters of sound objects, such as their sound level and selection, can be obtained. Furthermore, these data can be used to understand the relationship between the sound objects and the soundscapes. This paper describes the development and validation of an acoustic environment simulator, which can be used to design a complex acoustic environment in the laboratory according to the expectations of the user. Validation of the simulated soundscape, whether the composed acoustic environment has the same soundscape dimension characteristics as previous in-situ and other laboratory experiments, was conducted by reproducing acoustic environment compositions using a two-dimensional ambisonic system in the laboratory. Listener responses on semantic differential scales were reduced to three reliable soundscape dimensions by principal component analysis: Calmness/Relaxation (40%), Dynamics/Vibrancy (12%), and Communication (11%). These three soundscape dimensions are consistent with a previous study conducted in situ. The results reported here indicate that acoustic environment composition can successfully imitate the soundscape dimensions of an actual acoustic environment

Classification of soundscapes of urban public open spaces

It is increasingly acknowledged by landscape architects and urban planners that the soundscape contributes significantly to the perception of urban public open spaces. Describing and classifying this impact, however, remains a challenge. This article presents a hierarchical method for classification that distinguishes between backgrounded and foregrounded, disruptive and supportive, and finally calming and stimulating soundscapes. This four-class classification is applied to a growing collection of immersive audio-visual recordings of sound environments from around the world that could be explored using virtual reality playback. To validate the proposed methodology, an experiment involving 40 participants and 50 soundscape stimuli collected in urban public open spaces worldwide was conducted. The experiment showed that (1) the virtual reality headset reproduction based on affordable spatial audio with 360-degree video recordings was perceived as ecologically valid in terms of realism and immersion; (2) the proposed classification method results in well-separated classes; (3) membership to these classes could be explained by physical parameters, both regarding sound and vision. Moreover, models based on a limited number of acoustical indicators were constructed that could correctly classify a soundscape in each of the four proposed categories, with an accuracy exceeding 88% on an independent dataset