Contribution of single sounds to sound quality assessments of multi-source environments

摘要

In everyday life people are surrounded by several sound sources which complement each other in complex acoustical environments. Different models to predict annoyance reactions to combined noise sources, pre-dominantly based on loudness summation, have recently been proposed. However, it is still not understood how single sounds contribute to the evaluation of pleasantness of a multi-source environment, as the perceived sound quality is subject to numerous superposition and interaction effects of sounds with diverse acoustical characteristics. Therefore, the fundamental relationship between assessments of single and combined sound sources was investigated in the course of a listening experiment. Various sounds commonly occurring in suburban areas, including traffic noise, sounds from technical devices and natural sources, were evaluated in laboratory separately and combined in pairs with regard to their pleasantness. The results show that the combination ratings correspond to the sum of the single assessments and their interaction (R~2 = .95). Moreover, less pleasant sounds have greater influence than pleasant sounds, which can be attributed to masking effects and the negativity bias. A regression model is proposed that provides a highly accurate prediction for simple sound combinations in laboratory context. Consequently, validation for acoustical environments of higher complexity is needed in future.