Sound perception of the urban environment through an audio-visual approach

Abstract

Sound and visual environments of cities are usually studied separately without taking into consideration possible interactions between the two sensory modalities. The present research aims at developing an audio-visual approach for assessing the sound perception of the urban environment. It means an innovative approach which takes into account the influence of visual information on the sound judgment. In a preliminary in situ questionnaire, participants rated real-life urban environments along pairs of descriptive adjectives all related to the auditory modality. A Principle Components Factor Analysis revealed four perceptive factors characterizing the perception of the urban environment and also revealed two auditory variables which were the most influenced by the visual setting. Then, with a simulation experimental setting involving the creation of audio and visual artificial fields, a series of semantic differential tests was carried out. Listeners were required to rate the two auditory variables: appeasing–stressing and pleasant–unpleasant for eight sound urban environments and for four different visual settings. The results point out that judgments about the two sound variables are significantly influenced by the visual setting. Moreover, improvements in the experimental procedure suitable for testing audio–visual interactions in an urban context are discussed.