The relationship between sound source and urban soundscape

Abstract

Noise analysis of urban area is usually conducted according to noise level measurement. The noise level measurement concept only considers how loud the overall acoustic environment but not how people perceived each sound source. The soundscape concept has become a new alternative to analyse acoustic environment. This concept tries to understand the perception of the acoustic environment from the interaction between the sound sources and people who use the space. This study tries to understand the relationship between sound sources in an urban area with people’s perception related with three feeling: Relaxation, Dynamic, and Communication/Communality. An experiment was conducted using 26 simulated urban acoustic environments. The stimuli were composed using six sound sources: The sound of hubbub, urban traffic, construction noise, music, event sounds, and water fountain. The analysis was conducted using forward logistic regression. The perception of Relaxation is affected by the sound of music, urban traffic, and construction noise. The perception of Dynamic is affected by the sound of hubbub, urban traffic, and event sounds. The perception of Communication is affected by the sound of hubbub and water fountain. This result indicates that the perception of acoustic environment are related to specific sound source inside the environment.