Experimental study on a sound shading systemfor office environment

摘要

In order to prevent the transmission of the speech sound without using physicalrnmaterials, the masking noise generator has been proposed. It generates the random noise fromrnloudspeakers so that the people in the public space can not hear the speech sound by the effect of thernauditory masking. However, the generation of random noise disturbs the conversation itself becausernrandom noise gives oppressive feeling to the people. It seems to be one of the reasons why thernmasking system is not used well in Japan. Considering the original purpose of the masking system, itrnis not necessary to mask entire speech sound, but it must shade the meaning of the conversation.rnTherefore, the system required for facilitating the conversation should suppress the transmission of thernmeaning without disturbing the conversation. In this study, we propose a sound shading system whichrnis a partition with loudspeakers generating noise of low oppressive feeling and conduct subjective testsrnto confirm the performance of the proposed system.