Application of spectral-based wind noise reduction method to acoustical measurements

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Wind-induced microphone self-noise is a non-acoustic signal that may contaminate outdoor acoustical measurements, particularly at low frequencies, even when using a windscreen. A recently developed method [Cook etal., JASA Express Lett. 1, 063602 (2021)] uses the characteristic spectral slope of wind noise in the inertial subrange for screened microphones to automatically classify and reduce wind noise in acoustical measurements in the lower to middling frequency range of human hearing. To explore its uses and limitations, this method is applied to multiple acoustical measurements collected in both urban and rural environments. The method can be applied to one-third octave band spectral data with different frequency ranges and sampling intervals. By removing the shorter timescale data at frequencies where wind noise dominates the signal, the longer timescale acoustical environment can be more accurately represented. While considerations should be made about the specific applicability of the method to particular datasets, the wind reduction method allows for simple classification and reduction of wind-noise-contaminated data in large, diverse datasets. [Work supported by U.S. Army SBIR.]