Insufficiency of an environmental sound's power spectrum as a predictor of its annoyance

Abstract

The annoyance of environmental noise exposure and its "acceptability" with respect to land use compatibility and other interpretive criteria are routinely assessed in terms of assorted frequencyweighted noise metrics. Although laboratory measurements have established the utility of frequency-weighting networks and more complex procedures as predictors of the judged annoyance of sounds heard under controlled listening conditions, many factors can erode the predictive utility of noise metrics in residential settings. For example, relationships between Aweighted noise levels and the prevalence of annoyance due to environmental noise exposure typically account for less than half of the variance in community survey information about the prevalence of noise-induced annoyance. The current study indicates that even under controlled listening conditions, the spectral distribution of sound energy is not a fully sufficient predictor of the annoyance of transportation noise. This finding suggests a fundamental limitation on the generality of predictions of the annoyance of environmental noise exposure that are based on acoustic information alone. ©2002 Institute of Noise Control Engineering.

Annoyance by transportation noise: The effects of source identity and tonal components

“…Intriguingly, the result, replicated three times, that our transformed noise samples were less annoying than the identifiable ones, is at odds with earlier findings by Fidell et al (2002), Ellermeier et al (2004) and Zeitler et al (2004), who reported more annoyance for unidentifiable compared to identifiable sound samples. The samples used for the latter two articles were, however, everyday noises (e.g., a bouncing coin, a toilet flushing and sound from a coffee maker).…”

“…Another explanation could be that their samples were relatively short compared to ours-which means that their unrecognizable, neutralized noise samples were as well. This was also the case, but less so for Fidell et al (2002), who used samples of 8 s. In their experiment several transportation noises have been used as well. It is possible that short outbursts of unrecognizable sounds or pink noise are perceived as more annoying or threatening than the original sounds itself.…”

“…However, the sound samples used in these studies were all short (with durations of a couple of seconds). Slightly longer sound samples (8 s) were used by Fidell et al (2002), who conducted a similar experiment in which six commonplace sounds were processed into "twin-sounds" with the same mean energy, power spectrum, and duration: jet engine aircraft take-off, propeller-driven aircraft take-off, passing of a truck, passing of a train, violin cadenza, and a speech sample. All processed samples were judged as more annoying than their unprocessed twin, indicating that meaningless, temporally unstructured sounds generate more annoyance at the same sound levels.…”