Acoustic comfort in living environment

Abstract

As population of aging people growing fast, the need of long-term care facility is also increased. In the living environment of elder people, acoustic comfort has the same importance as thermal comfort and visual comfort. This research is to study the preference of acoustic comfort through the listening evaluation with normal hearing people. The listening evaluation is based on 20 live recorded sound samples from two Taiwanese long term care facilities and a university dormitory. The listening evaluation was participated by 66 architecture students. A semantic differential scale questionnaire with 11 pairs of sound qualities for each sound sample were used. The results shown that normal hearing people have negative impression for the current acoustic comfort condition of these Taiwanese long term care facilities. All of the respondents gave negative impression to water pump machine sound due to the “noisy” and “harsh” sound qualities. A live percussive music rehearsed event was associated with “noisy” and “agitating” impression by 97% of the respondents. Speech, TV, telephone ringing, snoring, and footsteps were also identified as discomfort sound quality. Bird chirping and quite dormitory room were recognized by 91% of the respondents as the most comfortable sound with the “natural” and “quiet” impression.