Effects of natural sounds on the perception of road traffic noise

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Author(s)
De Coensel, Bert
Vanwetswinkel, Sofie
Botteldooren, Dick
Griffith University Author(s)
Year published
2011
Metadata
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Recent studies show that introducing sound from water features in urban open spaces may reduce the loudness of road traffic noise, but it is not clear in which situations this measure also improves overall soundscape quality. This work describes a listening experiment on loudness, pleasantness, and eventfulness of stimuli that combine road traffic noise with fountain or bird sound at different sound levels. Adding fountain sound reduced the loudness of road traffic noise only if the latter had low temporal variability. Conversely, adding bird sound significantly enhanced soundscape pleasantness and eventfulness, more than ...
View more >Recent studies show that introducing sound from water features in urban open spaces may reduce the loudness of road traffic noise, but it is not clear in which situations this measure also improves overall soundscape quality. This work describes a listening experiment on loudness, pleasantness, and eventfulness of stimuli that combine road traffic noise with fountain or bird sound at different sound levels. Adding fountain sound reduced the loudness of road traffic noise only if the latter had low temporal variability. Conversely, adding bird sound significantly enhanced soundscape pleasantness and eventfulness, more than what was achieved by adding fountain sound.
View less >
View more >Recent studies show that introducing sound from water features in urban open spaces may reduce the loudness of road traffic noise, but it is not clear in which situations this measure also improves overall soundscape quality. This work describes a listening experiment on loudness, pleasantness, and eventfulness of stimuli that combine road traffic noise with fountain or bird sound at different sound levels. Adding fountain sound reduced the loudness of road traffic noise only if the latter had low temporal variability. Conversely, adding bird sound significantly enhanced soundscape pleasantness and eventfulness, more than what was achieved by adding fountain sound.
View less >
Journal Title
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
Volume
129
Issue
4
Copyright Statement
© 2011 Acoustical Society of America. The attached file is reproduced here in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher. Please refer to the journal's website for access to the definitive, published version.
Subject
Science & Technology
Life Sciences & Biomedicine
Acoustics
Audiology & Speech-Language Pathology