Construction noise and vibration can interrupt sleep/concentration of humans during renovations. Noise treatments or vibration breaks can reduce the impact. But could background noise cover up a moderate level of construction noise? Innocuous sounds are used to mask quieter but more annoying sounds. The concept is commonly used in offices to aid in concentration and reduce annoyance in places where people work or sleep. But could it be used to mask construction noise if the recipients were rodents rather than people? In theory, the concept of sound masking should be valid for other species of animals. Excessive noise and vibration has been shown to affect rodent behavior including breeding. Their hearing, extending into the ultrasound region, complicates efforts to recognize and measure the rodents’ acoustical environment. During the past several years, we have had occasion to study the literature on rodents’ hearing and the use of masking to prevent the creatures from being bothered by intruding sound. In this paper, we summarize the literature and investigate the concept of masking for rodents with respect to regularly encountered sound sources and sounds from construction activities.
When attempting to make meaningful measurements, airborne ultrasound in the 20 kHz to 100 kHz frequency range presents several significant challenges. These include source and sensor directivity, low signal-to-noise ratios, the inaudible nature of such sounds, and the lack of widespread literature on the subject. For each of these challenges, the practical impacts versus conventional acoustic measurements are identified and discussed. Solutions and suggestions are presented to allow reliable and repeatable measurements when presented with these challenges, including critical information to have prior to measurement, an assortment of techniques which may be employed when performing these measurements, and a brief overview of useful post-processing techniques. The concepts presented in this paper are illustrated using ultrasound measurements made in a vivarium.
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