VR-based realistic assessment of annoyance for the noise of children running in apartment buildings

Abstract

This study assessed annoyance response to temporal variations of sound energy of heavy floor impact in apartment buildings by using a virtual reality environment. As for a real moving sound source, the noise of a child running diagonally on the floor was reproduced by applying HRTF to the sound source of a single impact ball. Annoyance was assessed in the acoustic environment where visual information was provided by using HMD and directional information was given by using HRTF. A comparison scale using the equal-appearing interval (EQI) was adopted to reflect the sense of daily life. As a result, when visual information was provided in the VR environment, the annoyance of subjects decreased. On the other hand, directional information was given, the subjects became more sensitive to annoyance. Consequently, annoyance was more affected by the direction of a heavy moving sound source than the visual information. The VR-based environment of this study turned out to be realistic in a pyschoacoustic experiment.