RELATION BETWEEN THE OVERALL IMPRESSION OF THE SOUND ENVIRONMENT AND TYPES AND LOUDNESS OF ENVIRONMENTAL SOUNDS

This paper reports an experimental study determining the effects of the type and loudness of individual sounds on the overall impression of the sound environment. Field and laboratory experiments were carried out. In each experiment, subjects evaluated the sound environment presented, which consisted of combinations of three individual sounds of road traffic, singing crickets and the murmuring of a river, with five bipolar adjective scales such as Good–Bad, Active–Calm and Natural–Artificial. Overall loudness had the strongest effect on most types of evaluations; relative SPL has a greater effect than overall loudness on a particular evaluation of the natural–artificial scale. The test sounds in the field experiment were generally evaluated as more good and more natural than those in the laboratory. The results of comparisons between laboratory and field sounds indicate a difference in the trend between them. This difference may be explained by the term of selective listening but that needs further investigation.