Urban soundscape design aims to create outdoor spaces with a pleasant sonic environment, and is of special interest where noise level abatement is not feasible or only has a limited effect. A possible approach is to mask unpleasant sounds by adding other sounds that can be considered as desirable by the users of the space. In this context, not only energetic masking but also informational masking should be taken into account. The presented model of auditory attention provides a computational tool to assess the effectiveness of such interventions, thus reducing the need for a listening panel. After an initial training phase for a particular sonic environment, the model provides an acoustic summary containing the sounds that constitute the soundscape. Moreover, the model can be used to simulate how a listener switches attention between the sounds over time. The model, balancing computational efficiency and biological accuracy, provides the urban soundscape designer with a tool for analyzing both real and artificial mixtures. In this way, the perceptual effect of adding pleasant sounds can be assessed.
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