The Selection of Introduced Sounds to Improve the Soundscape in the Public Spaces

Abstract

The purpose of introducing sounds is to afford a comfortable acoustic environment and to design good soundscapes. This study aims at rating the preference of subjects for the introduced sounds suitable to the public spaces and also investigates the methodology to select the sounds by subjective and objective procedures. Seventeen kinds of the introduced sounds were evaluated with nine adjectives in the presence of visual location information. Also, adequate sound levels were calculated by adjusting the volume of introduced sounds in the presence of the actual background sounds of locations and visual information. The concept of harmony with the surroundings was reviewed by analyzing the correlation among 9 adjectives which express introduced sounds. And the effectiveness of existed sound quality index was analyzed so as to select the introduced sounds quantitatively. By the evaluation of the adequate level of the introduced sounds, it is proposed that the lower introduced sound level would be better for the noisy circumstances.

Effects of Sounds from Water on Perception of Acoustic Environments Dominated by Road-Traffic Noise

“…Previous research has found positive effects of sounds from water on the overall quality of acoustic environments [9,8,7]. The present study contributes to this research in twow ays.…”

“…In the present study,n o visual input wasp rovided. However, it is known that the visual appearance of an environment will affect howi ts acoustic aspects are assessed [41,42,7,43,25]. Al ogical extension of the present research would therefore be to explore the joint effect of acoustic and visual impressions from water structures.…”

“…However, only af ew systematic studies have been published. Listening experiments by Jang and Kook [7], and by Jeon, Lee, Yo u, and Kang [8,9] found positive effects of water sounds on the evaluation of acoustic environments in urban public open spaces. The present listening experiment adds to this research by exploring the effect of water sounds with different characters and varying degree of pleasantness, on acoustic environments dominated by road-trafficnoise.…”

Investigation on Influence of Additional Sound on Comfortableness of Living Environment

“…Design of sound environment by intentionally adding some sounds was examined [1,2], and the comfortableness of some environments was evaluated by using the audio-visual stimuli based on the soundscape [3,4]. The former two studies [1,2] were carried out with various impression categories including comfortableness, but the effect of the conditions on additional sound was not statistically clear.…”

“…The former two studies [1,2] were carried out with various impression categories including comfortableness, but the effect of the conditions on additional sound was not statistically clear. Moreover, the target environments were limited to public spaces.…”