Psychological evaluation of transmitted sounds in living spaces

摘要

Sounds transmitted from neighboring houses in multiple dwelling houses sometimes cause serious noise problems. It is desired to have walls with good sound insulation performance between houses. In this study, a psychological experiment was conducted in order to find factors and metrics which show good correlation with psychological evaluation. Ten kinds of sound source were used. They were musical performances, female and male voices. The duration of each sound source was 5 s. The values of L_(Aeq,5s) were set at 60 and 65 dB at the neighboring room. Additional defects were added from 2dB to 10dB in each of six octave bands, the center frequency of which were 125, 250, 500, 1k, 2k and 4k Hz. In total 640 kinds of sound were prepared. They were connected with 1 s silent interval in random order. Twenty-one participants joined in this experiment. They were requested to judge continuously how clearly the sounds from neighbors were audible using the method of continuous judgment by category. The results suggest that the sound insulation performance can be evaluated with LAeq and that the sound from an air-conditioner can be used as a good masking noise.