Abstract
Urban soundscapes are characterized by much more than loudness alone. Subjective description has been used by many researchers to grasp these additional dimensions, but very little objective criteria are found in literature. In this paper the dynamics of the soundscape is proposed as a potential indicator. By analyzing loudness and pitch fluctuations in longer sound fragments recorded in urban environment, 1/f spectral behavior at frequencies ranging from 0.01 to 10 Hz was discovered. Such behavior is typical for complex systems and was found to be very common in (classical) music, already in the seventies. Some hypotheses will be given on the origin of this frequency dependence of urban-soundscape dynamics. The possibility of discriminating soundscapes on the basis of the frequency dependence of loudness and pitch fluctuation will be illustrated. For this purpose the urban soundscapes are compared to ‘‘extreme’’ soundscapes that have a very distinct character that is clear to every observer.
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