Appraisal of Significance of Acoustic Parameters in Contribution to Human Annoyance

Abstract

The goal of this paper was to describe a study which aimed to determine the significance of acoustic parameters in terms of some typical audio signals which occur in common urban environments. The focus when establishing the significance was set on their relevance with respect to the annoyance of the study participants. In order to carry out this experiment, an acoustic environment recording was made in which short distracting signals were inserted into the acoustic environment background sound. The recording obtained in the described way was then reproduced to listeners in laboratory conditions. Furthermore, the experiment was envisaged in a way that the participants had the option to adjust the following acoustic parameters: the amplitude, duration and the amplitude growth rates of the short signals. In order to prove the statistical significance of the obtained results from the experiment and the study premise, the chi-square test was applied. Thus, according to the results of the study, the ranking of the objective acoustic parameters was achieved with respect to the human annoyance i.e., it can be concluded that the most common reason for the human annoyance in different acoustic environments is the sound amplitude, then its duration and finally its amplitude growth rate.

Keywords

• noise pollution
• human annoyance
• acoustic environment
• amplitude
• duration
• amplitude growth rate