Auditory sensory saliency as a better predictor of change than sound amplitude in pleasantness assessment of reproduced urban soundscapes

Filipan, Karlo; Coensel, Bert De; Aumond, Pierre; Can, Arnaud; Lavandier, Catherine; Botteldooren, Dick

doi:10.1016/j.buildenv.2018.10.054

Cited by 21 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…In future studies, computational models of auditory noticeability (saliency) could be employed to quantify noticeability and to explore the relationship between the noticeability of sounds and soundscape perception (Filipan et al, 2019). Moreover, further experimental studies on the impact of noticeability of natural sounds in soundscape design should be performed.…”

Section: Implications In Soundscape Design and Its Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of adding natural sounds to urban noises on the perceived loudness of noise and soundscape quality

Hong

Ong

Lam

et al. 2020

Science of The Total Environment

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Introducing pleasant natural sounds to mask urban noises is an important soundscape design strategy to improve acoustic comfort. This study investigates the effects of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) between natural sounds (signal) and the target noises (noise) and their temporal characteristics on the perceived loudness of noise (PLN) and overall soundscape quality (OSQ) through a laboratory experiment. Two types of urban noise sources (hydraulic breaker and traffic noises) were set to A-weighted equivalent sound pressure levels (SPL) of 55, 65, and 75 dB and then augmented with two types of natural sounds (birdsong and stream), across a range of SNRs. Each acoustic stimulus was a combination of noise and natural sound at SNRs from −6 to 6 dB. Averaged across all cases, the subjective assessment of PLN showed that augmenting urban noise separately with the two natural sounds reduced the PLN by 17.9%, with no significant differences found between the birdsong and stream sounds. Adding natural sounds increased the OSQ by on average 18.3% across the cases, but their effects gradually decreased as the noise level increased. The OSQ of the birdsong and stream sounds were similar for traffic noise, whereas the stream sound was rated higher than the birdsong for the breaker noise. The results suggest that increasing the dissimilarity in temporal structure between the target noise and natural sounds could enhance the soundscape quality. Appropriate SNRs were explored considering both PLN and OSQ. The results showed that the SNR of −6 dB was desirable when the A-weighted SPL of the noise rose to 75 dB.

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Section: Implications In Soundscape Design and Its Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of adding natural sounds to urban noises on the perceived loudness of noise and soundscape quality

Hong

Ong

Lam

et al. 2020

Science of The Total Environment

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“…Being away from traffic noise is considered an important motivator for cycling (Winters et al, 2011). The pleasantness of following a path through the city has been associated with the sonic and visual environment (Aumond et al, 2017) and salient sounds were found to trigger attention and cause changes in reported pleasantness of the environment (Filipan et al, 2019). Finally, sounds may disturb cyclists' level of concentration (Suetomi and Niibe, 2002).…”

Section: Noisementioning

confidence: 99%

Does cycling infrastructure reduce stress biomarkers in commuting cyclists? A comparison of five European cities

Teixeira

Silva

Schwanen

et al. 2020

Journal of Transport Geography

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There is substantial evidence that the environment has an important impact on the use of bicycles. Changes in the built environment, such as cycling infrastructure provision, usually aim at improving the efficiency, enjoyability and safety of cycling. They can also shape affective responses, for instance by triggering or preventing stress situations during cycling. The repeated occurrence of intensely stressful events may make actual cyclists more likely to abandon cycling and deter prospective cyclists from actually taking up this form of mobility. Therefore, using a novel approach, based on stress biomarker measurements obtained directly from cyclists, the objective of this study is to investigate the relationship between urban environment and cyclists' stress. It also investigates if different types of cycling infrastructures in the contexts of two different countries and in five different cities have different relationships with stress. Using a stress sensor, 70 young adults were invited to cycle along a standard route in Oxford, London (the United Kingdom), Amsterdam, Houten and Groningen (the Netherlands). These routes were around 6 km long and had a wide range of characteristics. Multilevel logistic regression analysis indicates that the probability of stressful events occurring is significantly lower on physically segregated cycle paths than on cycle paths on streets, with cycling on general use streets falling in-between these extremes. We also find higher probabilities of stress for primary roads compared to tertiary roads, at intersections than on straight roads, on cobbled and off-road surfaces compared to asphalt, and in noisier places. Models for the individual cities suggested that the relationship between cycling infrastructure and the likelihood of stressful events occurring may depend on the local context. Only for noise conditions, intersection types and cycling infrastructures were the effects consistent across the cities. These findings may be useful for urban infrastructure planning and management, indicating specific attributes that should be adjusted to make cycling less stressful.

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“…Although related to perception, it is possible to define the physical characteristics that contribute to saliency (Kaya and Elhilali, 2017). In this study, we used a computational model (Filipan et al, 2019) which calculates the saliency of the sound by simulating several aspects of the measured physiological response of the brain.. For the full overview of the saliency model used we refer to (Filipan et al, 2019).…”

Section: Psychoacoustical Indicators and Saliencymentioning

confidence: 99%

Classification of soundscapes of urban public open spaces

sun

Coensel

Filipan

et al. 2019

Landscape and Urban Planning

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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 audiovisual 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 360degree 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.

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Auditory sensory saliency as a better predictor of change than sound amplitude in pleasantness assessment of reproduced urban soundscapes

Cited by 21 publications

References 53 publications

Effects of adding natural sounds to urban noises on the perceived loudness of noise and soundscape quality

Effects of adding natural sounds to urban noises on the perceived loudness of noise and soundscape quality

Does cycling infrastructure reduce stress biomarkers in commuting cyclists? A comparison of five European cities

Classification of soundscapes of urban public open spaces

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