Study of soundscapes in heritage festivals: the "Fallas" of Valencia, "Festa de la Mare de Déu d'Algemesí" and the "Moros y Cristianos" festival of Villena (Alicante)

Abstract

The conservation of the Intangible Cultural Sound Heritage of Humanity is one of the most important assets of a people as it is linked to its culture and history. Its evaluation by means of objective acoustic and psycho-acoustic parameters makes it possible to characterise these environments from objective, aesthetic and emotional criteria. The description of the soundscape is governed by the ISO 12913 standard. The procedure for assessing soundscapes in outdoor sites is carried out with sound-walks. In this work, we have evaluated two different soundscapes in festivities in Spain: "Fallas" in Valencia, "Festa de la Mare de Déu" in Algemesí and "Moros y Cristianos" in Villena. This evaluation has been carried out by recording the ambient sound of these festivities while walking among people. From the recordings, we calculated different psychoacoustic metrics (i.e. loudness, sharpness, roughness, fluctuation stress and tonality) and evaluated them with Zwicker models. In addition, a subjective survey was conducted to compare the subjective response with the psychoacoustic metrics.