A new system of environmental noise identification and subjective evaluation

Abstract

A new system of environmental noise identification including aircraft noise or traffic noise and its subjective evaluation based on the model of the human auditory-brain system [Y. Ando, Architectural Acoustics—Blending sound sources, sound fields, and listeners (AIP Press/ Springer-Verlag, New York, 1998)] is proposed. In order to discuss the subjective effects of environmental noise, following factors are calculated by use of the autocorrelation function (ACF) and interaural crosscorrelation function (IACF) of binaural signals; From the ACF analysis: (1) energy represented at the origin of the delay, Φ(0); (2) effective duration of the envelope of the normalized ACF, τe; (3) the delay time of the first peak, τ1; and (4) its amplitude, φ1 are extracted. From the IACF analysis: (5) IACC; (6) interaural delay time at which the IACC is defined, τIACC; and (7) width of the IACF at the τIACC, WIACC are extracted. For example, loudness is related with Φ(0) and τe, and directional information may be obtained from τIACC. Especially, a noise source may be identified by the all ACF factors are timbre. [Work was partially supported by the Research and Development Applying Advanced Computational Science and Technology, Japan, Science and Technology Corporation (ACT-JST), 1999.]