Restaurant Noise: Levels and Temporal Characteristics

Abstract

Noise in restaurants affects diners and service employees. Normally, people will not eat alone. They would rather enjoy good food and drink with business partners, friends, and family in restaurants and unavoidably they talk happily and loudly. Speeches from other restaurant patrons, service employees, mingling with background music and noise from ventilation systems, will interfere with communication between a talker and listeners. This paper presents a territory-wide noise survey in Hong Kong restaurants and presents a mathematical model that describes the background noise level in restaurants. The measured noise levels show that restaurant noise ranged from 66.7 to 82.6 dBA with a mean value of 73.9 dBA (SD = 3.81 dBA) while the mathematical model illustrates that the background noise level in restaurants mainly depends on the occupancy density. The model was validated by another two sets of noise measurement data recorded in other restaurants. The time record of noise measurement shows that the variation of noise levels decreases when the occupancy density increases. People have to raise their voice effort to improve their speech intelligibility in a very noisy environment.

Lombard effect, intelligibility, ambient noise, and willingness to spend time and money in a restaurant amongst older adults

“…Restaurants have a wide range of noise during hours of operation, which has caused restaurant critics to carry sound level meters to evaluate the noise levels to include in their reports 1 . Typical restaurant noise can fluctuate throughout the course of an evening ranging from 65 dB(A) up to as high as 85 dB(A) 1 , 3 , 4 , 7 , 13 . This causes increased difficulty to be heard and understood by anyone 4 , 5 , 10 , 13 .…”

“…Typical restaurant noise can fluctuate throughout the course of an evening ranging from 65 dB(A) up to as high as 85 dB(A) 1 , 3 , 4 , 7 , 13 . This causes increased difficulty to be heard and understood by anyone 4 , 5 , 10 , 13 . The main source of noise in a restaurant is caused by the patrons, as a consequence several researches suggested that dining establishments should no longer be thought to have “maximum capacity” but rather “acoustical capacity” 5 , 6 , 10 .…”

Effects of typical dining styles on conversation behaviours and acoustic perception in restaurants in China

“…Moreover, another previous study pointed out that the vary price of restaurants may lead to social differences, which in turn, could influence the conversation behaviours [65]. Furthermore, some recently works have shown that the different background music styles, such as jazz, rock-androll, and classical music may also lead to the different speed of conversation [66], and the acoustics comfort could consequently be affected. Thus, in future studies, those could be further examined.…”

Next generation soundscape design using virtual reality technologies

“…12 Later on, To and Chung (2015) compared the measured noise levels in Hong Kong restaurants and those reported in other places and indicated that there was no significant difference between them. 13 They also performed continuous noise measurements and showed that people increases their vocal effort when the ambient noise level increases -known as the Lombard effect. 13 Hence, the tonality and temporal characteristics of sounds in restaurants vary from time to time.…”

“…13 They also performed continuous noise measurements and showed that people increases their vocal effort when the ambient noise level increases -known as the Lombard effect. 13 Hence, the tonality and temporal characteristics of sounds in restaurants vary from time to time. Besides, the tonal characteristics of restaurants in different parts of the world are different because of the different languages and dialects used by diners and service employees.…”