Unique Soundscapes Research Articles

Perception of indoor and outdoor school soundscapes: A large-scale Cross-Sectional survey with UK teachers

This study explores variations in teachers’ perception of indoor and outdoor soundscapes across different spaces within schools. A quantitative research design involved 452 teachers in the United Kingdom who participated in an online questionnaire. The questionnaire was distributed to UK teachers via random sampling on the Prolific platform, utilizing its customizable demographics for participant recruitment. A multi-method approach, combining closed- and open-ended questions, captured the multifaceted nature of soundscape perception. Participants reported on perceptions and experiences of school soundscapes in general areas, classrooms, hallways, dinner halls, playgrounds, and gyms. Findings reveal that schools are perceived as dynamic environments, characterized by a blend of chaos, engagement, and excitement, contradicting expectations of a calm atmosphere. Correlation analysis demonstrated weak associations between age and perceptions of the acoustic environment (rs([452])=[0.116]), as well as gender (rs([450])=[0.060]), teaching experience (rs([450])=[0.117]), school type (rs([450])=[− 0.109]), school location (rs([450])=[0.098]), time spent in outdoor places (rs([450])=[0.09]). A significant positive correlations were observed between wellbeing and the overall school soundscape (rs([450])=[0.286]), indicating that as self-reported wellbeing increases, the perceived quality of the school soundscape tends to increase. Differences were seen in the soundscapes of playgrounds, dinner halls, gyms, hallways, and classrooms compared to the overall school soundscape. These distinctions highlight varying levels of engagement, comfort, intrusiveness, and privacy across different areas, emphasizing the multifaceted nature of sound perception within schools. The study shows teachers use sound in education for different reasons and methods, with perceived impacts on student learning and wellbeing. It suggests the possibility of enhancing the educational experience through tailored interventions targeting specific areas in schools based on their unique soundscapes.

The Urban Soundscapes of a Studentified Neighbourhood in the City of Tshwane, South Africa

AbstractUrban environments produce distinctive and diverse soundscapes. The challenge of noise in particular impacts city dwellers and urban livability. There is an abundance of research focused on noise pollution with a limited but growing research interest in urban soundscapes. Few studies, however, explore the unique soundscapes and challenges of noise in neighbourhoods that have undergone studentification. Indeed, the development of student housing, the concentration of a student population, and the clustering of activities related to spaces of student consumption produce unique and often polluted soundscapes. Using three ethnographic soundwalks and a survey with students from the University of Pretoria, this paper explores the soundscapes of Hatfield, a neighbourhood that has undergone studentification. This paper seeks to understand the challenges related to urban noise and how this impacts students. It was found that noise has unique spatio-temporal characteristics impacting student’s ability to manage noise. Indeed, noise emanating from traffic and entertainment establishments is perceived to be the most disruptive. It is recommended that urban planners, property developers, architects, and urban managers need to be aware of the unique and often polluted soundscapes that are associated with a studentified neighbourhood. This awareness could inform better urban planning, architectural and urban design, and policies on the management of noise levels within these types of neighbourhoods.

DELTA: Integrating Multimodal Sensing with Micromobility for Enhanced Sidewalk and Pedestrian Route Understanding.

Urban environments are undergoing significant transformations, with pedestrian areas emerging as complex hubs of diverse mobility modes. This shift demands a more nuanced approach to urban planning and navigation technologies, highlighting the limitations of traditional, road-centric datasets in capturing the detailed dynamics of pedestrian spaces. In response, we introduce the DELTA dataset, designed to improve the analysis and mapping of pedestrian zones, thereby filling the critical need for sidewalk-centric multimodal datasets. The DELTA dataset was collected in a single urban setting using a custom-designed modular multi-sensing e-scooter platform encompassing high-resolution and synchronized audio, visual, LiDAR, and GNSS/IMU data. This assembly provides a detailed, contextually varied view of urban pedestrian environments. We developed three distinct pedestrian route segmentation models for various sensors-the 4K camera, stereocamera, and LiDAR-each optimized to capitalize on the unique strengths and characteristics of the respective sensor. These models have demonstrated strong performance, with Mean Intersection over Union (IoU) values of 0.84 for the reflectivity channel, 0.96 for the 4K camera, and 0.92 for the stereocamera, underscoring their effectiveness in ensuring precise pedestrian route identification across different resolutions and sensor types. Further, we explored audio event-based classification to connect unique soundscapes with specific geolocations, enriching the spatial understanding of urban environments by associating distinctive auditory signatures with their precise geographical origins. We also discuss potential use cases for the DELTA dataset and the limitations and future possibilities of our research, aiming to expand our understanding of pedestrian environments.

ANALYSIS OF THE DEGREE OF STUDY AND GLOBAL EXPERIENCE IN OPTIMIZING URBAN NOISE POLLUTION

А collection and analysis of domestic and international publications on the impact of noise pollution on the physical and emotional well-being of mega-city residents were conducted. It was found that noise pollution directly affects the quality of life and the physical and mental health of people, leading to significant economic losses through medical expenses, deaths, and a decrease in the market value of real estate located near noise sources. Moreover, it was discovered that noise negatively influences not only the physical well-being of humans but also the behavior of urban animals and birds, compelling them to adapt their mating rituals and communication methods. While these behavioral changes help animals be more audible in noisy environments, they impact the reproductive success of certain species, potentially leading to their extinction and causing an ecological catastrophe. The study identified a global trend of lagging efforts to combat urban noise and solve problems only after their existence is acknowledged. The research explored the primary internationally recognized and widely used tools for reducing noise levels in urban environments, including methods within the field of landscape architecture: functional zoning of urban areas, construction of noise reduction screens (NRS), installation of noise-absorbing road surfaces, traffic restrictions, or speed limits, and the creation of green barriers, among others. Furthermore, the article outlined the main trends in the future development of improving sound comfort in cities, such as the establishment of "quiet zones" and the creation of unique soundscapes in contemporary mega-cities. Examples include the iconic sounds of Big Ben in London or the call to prayer from the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, which provide emotionally rich experiences. In a broader sense, acoustic comfort should not be considered solely as the absence of noise but rather as a situation where acoustic environments offer significant opportunities for human development and careful consideration of their physical and mental well-being.

Transparent Sonic Sculptures in Site-Specific Intermedia Music

The paper deals in the first part with the centripetal juxtaposition of Marcel Duchamp’s Sculpture Musicale and John Cage’s 4’33”. Both pieces became the starting points of the author´s creation of acousmatic comprovised music saving/transforming unique soundscapes (mostly) in Slovakia. The sounds of specific environments (with semantic social meanings) as a kind of unique musical-sonic sculptures were involved in his musical artistic projects: e. g. Animation of Silence (in Music) of Puppets (2000), or Nitrian Atlantises (2013) dedicated to the part of the pre-ancient history of Nitra as well as to semantic parallels of this period in the contemporary life of the city. Melancholy (2017), co-created with the fine artist Slavomír Zombek and the poet Peter Milčák, has changed the site of a desolate cowhouse near Levoča to the site-specific gallery/concert hall of sounding events. Sonic Sculpture of Bin (2018) inspired by Duchamp’s idea mentioned above was realized in a deserted refinery in Rimavská Sobota as site-specific sonic-musical piece, as well as other transparent sonic sculptures Cockroach Lure (2019) with intermedia artist Petr Nikl, and two pieces, La Mer (2021/2022) and ÚÚÚ-FFF-ÓÓÓ (2021), dedicated to two great Slovak conceptual intermedia artists, Milan Adamčiak and Július Koller. In the final comment, the author writes about the phenomena of sonic photography – related to the ideas of Roland Barthes’ La Chambre Claire – which can be appropriated as an organic part of transparent sonic-musical sculpture.

Introduction

Introduction

SoundSight: a mobile sensory substitution device that sonifies colour, distance, and temperature

Depth, colour, and thermal images contain practical and actionable information for the blind. Conveying this information through alternative modalities such as audition creates new interaction possibilities for users as well as opportunities to study neuroplasticity. The ‘SoundSight’ App (www.SoundSight.co.uk) is a smartphone platform that allows 3D position, colour, and thermal information to directly control thousands of high-quality sounds in real-time to create completely unique and responsive soundscapes for the user. Users can select the specific sensor input and style of auditory output, which can be based on anything—tones, rainfall, speech, instruments, or even full musical tracks. Appropriate default settings for image-sonification are given by designers, but users still have a fine degree of control over the timing and selection of these sounds. Through utilising smartphone technology with a novel approach to sonification, the SoundSight App provides a cheap, widely accessible, scalable, and flexible sensory tool. In this paper we discuss common problems encountered with assistive sensory tools reaching long-term adoption, how our device seeks to address these problems, its theoretical background, its technical implementation, and finally we showcase both initial user experiences and a range of use case scenarios for scientists, artists, and the blind community.

Sounds from Nowhere

When Pandit Ravi Shankar began performing for Western audiences in the 1960s, his collaborative instinct for the meeting of Hindustani music and jazz was challenged by what he described as "shrieking, shouting, smoking, masturbating, and copulating" audiences of "strange young weirdos," according to Mick Brown writing for <i>The Telegraph</i>. We can only imagine the debates of high and low art which were fought between Shankar and George Harrison, Bud Shank, or even Tony Scott, who were few of his many collaborators from the West. Caught between its original referent and its appeal to learned style, jazz (with its roots in African-American history) is placed at the center of debates about authenticity, gatekeeping, and located-ness. Once something like "world music," composed through collaboration, fusion, and re-sampling, enters a space not used to any of the styles mixed into this world of music, it creates unique soundscapes. Ethnomusicologist Martin Stokes, writing "On Musical Cosmopolitanism," looks at the course of sounds through the world to think of music "as a process in the making of 'worlds,' rather than a passive reaction to global 'systems'" (6). The world created is never an unproblematically imported ambience. A jazz club anywhere in the world does not always correspond to Dixieland, or Chicago, or New York, nor does it reveal the influence of Black labor-songs, vaudeville, or ragtime. This is where an album like Indian composer duo Shankar-Jaikishan’s <i>Raga-Jazz Style</i> (1968) becomes interesting, compressing 11 ragas from Hindustani music into curt pieces corresponding to different, morphed forms of jazz. By looking at the history of the circulation of interfused styles of jazz in America, Goa, Bombay, and mainstream Hindi cinema, this paper examines the material conditions of creativity, and attempts to inscribe this global creative collaboration of forms into a connected history of jazz and Hindustani music.

Assessing the Effects of Noise on Sound Identities of Historical Landmarks

The degradation caused by environmental noise affects the sound identities of several areas, especially at a city level, so there is a need for immediate individual and collective action. This paper focuses on the environmental noise impacts towards the soundscapes of historical landmarks located in the city of Thessaloniki (Greece). Furthermore, it offers an insight regarding a new urban quiet area attribute, since it discovers whether elevation contributes to the formation of their sound identity. The first step of this research utilized the opinion of more than 500 residents of Thessaloniki with the aid of a questionnaire, in order to highlight areas of the city’s historic center with unique soundscapes. The resulted soundscapes were studied and analyzed by gathering both quantitative and qualitative data. Finally, these soundscapes were assessed by sound experts in order to thoroughly describe their sound identities. The Roman and Byzantine landmarks studied, being at lower and higher elevation levels, respectively, presented differentiations regarding noise levels and other soundscape characteristics. This paper proposes a new protocol, according to which the factor of elevation is worth considering during the process of identifying and utilizing urban quiet areas.

PRODÜKSİYON AMAÇLI KENT ODAKSAL SES BANKASI OLUŞTURMA: ŞEHR-İ SADA İZMİR

Sound design is an essential element of visual productions such as movies, tv series and stage performances. Sound tracks which are created using reproduced sounds or previously recorded audio libraries make the resulting product much more realistic. While reproduction is an inevitable necessity to be the first method in production, using previously recorded tracks requires a serious memory, a sound library. Sound libraries produced by leading companies such as Lucas, Universal and BBC and other companies like Boom Library and Bigfishaudio etc. have been used in countless productions. Thanks to these sound banks, it is possible to reach thousands of audio sources with different audio qualities. However, some of the audio libraries do not reflect the actual sonic properties of the environment adequately thus putting the production in a difficult situation and resulting in a loss of time. One of these problematic audio sources are the city sounds. Cities are alive for twenty-four hours, with diverse soundscapes like city squares, markets, parks, public transportation areas, entertainment and shopping centers. On the other hand, every city has their unique identity and the city’s “sound” is one of the genuine features which let us recall that identity. Therefore, an audio library which consists of city sounds make it easy for the users to get their hands-on city-focused common sounds, creating the opportunity to project that city’s identity when perceived. The aim of this Project is to create a city-focused sound bank to be used in productions. The city of Izmir, which we will present with its unique soundscapes, will be the first city to be recorded. This library set an example for the upcoming libraries and city of Izmir will be more convenient to work in because of the ease of operation and transportation. The target is to record approximately 200 sounds in 40 different and categorised areas/spaces like Konak square, Kordon coastline, Basmane, Agora, Boat piers, Teleferik area etc. directly reflecting the identity of Izmir

Comparing soundscape assessment methods with natural-language expressions and a questionnaire survey: A case study in Seoul, Korea

A Swedish soundscape quality protocol was developed and has been used as a representative soundscape-quality assessment method around Europe. However, this protocol has limitations in Asian countries because the countries have distinctly different social and cultural backgrounds and form their own unique soundscapes. Consequently, this study examined the utility of a soundscape assessment survey for Koreans by comparing unconstrained natural-language expressions and existing protocol survey questions. To this end, soundscape data from a variety of places, e.g., parks, tourist attractions, and commercial areas in Seoul, Korea, were collected using 360-deg cameras and Soundfield microphones. In addition, a virtual-reality (VR) assessment environment was constructed using a head-mounted device (HMD) and 3-D audio technology under laboratory conditions, and the collected soundscapes were assessed. The participants were encouraged to freely and verbally express their thoughts about the sound environment of each place, and text data were obtained through voice-recognition technology. The protocol survey was conducted for the same subjects after the assessment. The results showed that it is necessary to develop a soundscape assessment standard that is appropriate for Koreans because differences from the existing European-style soundscape protocol were revealed in the assessment items, when an emotional analysis was conducted using text-mining technology.

Glass sponge reef soundscapes

Many structured biogenic habitats are biodiversity hotspots and thus possess unique soundscapes largely driven by the biophony. To date, the vast majority of research has focused on shallow-water biogenic habitats such as coral or oyster reefs. Glass sponge reefs are a deep-water habitat analogous in many ways to shallow-water coral reefs. These reefs are built by three species of hexactinellid sponges which form complex 3-dimensional habitats that support diverse communities of animals. Many soniferous animals, including rockfish, are strongly associated with patches of live-sponge dominated habitat within the reef foot-print. Consequently, we hypothesized that glass sponge reefs and the communities they support would generate unique soundscapes. Beginning in September of 2016, we deployed a series of underwater acoustic recorders on sponge reefs throughout Canada’s Pacific continental shelf. Initial results show that recorders located on sponge reefs were significantly louder in the mid- and high-frequency bands (100–1000 Hz and 1–10 kHz, respectively). Additionally, many fish calls were detected in recordings from within sponge reefs, while few fish calls were observed at similar depths in off-reef habitats. We will discuss our understanding of the link between soundscapes and biodiversity in glass sponge reef habitats and the potential application of ecosystem-level monitoring.

Soundscape assessment of a monumental place: A methodology based on the perception of dominant sounds

Some monumental sites have unique soundscapes that deserve to be managed not only by their tourist and cultural value, but also for enhancing the visitors’ overall impression. These sites can include a multitude of sound sources within a variety of different locations with geometrically different spaces in size and shape, so that the soundscape assessment could be quite challenging. The hypothesis of this study is that regardless of the complexity of sound sources comprising a given acoustic environment, the perceived soundscape quality is driven primarily by the evaluation of the subjectively dominant sounds. This hypothesis was tested in a field study conducted in a monumental site with historical relevance located in a semi-natural environment (the Alhambra of Granada, Spain). The main finding was that, for a given location, the higher the percentage of visitors reporting a pleasant sound as dominant, the higher the reported soundscape quality and overall impression. Moreover, it was found that: (i) the sounds of birds, water and visitors (voices and footsteps) are the sounds primarily reported as dominant, (ii) the throngs of visitors (human sounds) negatively affect the soundscape quality, (iii) natural sounds increase the reported pleasantness, especially water sounds, which significantly improve the perceived soundscape quality. The practical implication is that, with appropriate information on subjectively dominant sound sources to prioritize corrective actions, soundscape management and its enhancement will require much less time and operational effort than other options for soundscape assessment based on the use of extensive questionnaires.

Underwater soundscapes in near-shore tropical habitats and the effects of environmental degradation and habitat restoration

Most marine habitats have unique soundscapes and, among other potential ecological consequences, the larvae of many fish and invertebrates use habitat-specific sounds to locate appropriate settlement habitat. Anthropogenic stressors have degraded coastal ecosystems worldwide, but the effects of this degradation on the sounds emanating from deteriorated habitats are largely undocumented, as is the effectiveness of habitat restoration in reestablishing natural soundscapes. In this study, we investigated how ambient sound emanating from three near-shore, tropical habitats (subtidal mangrove prop-root habitat, seagrass, and sponge-dominated hard-bottom) in the Florida Keys, Florida (USA) varied with time-of-day and lunar phase. We also examined whether the destruction of sponge communities in hard-bottom habitats struck by cyanobacteria blooms alters the soundscape of that habitat, and if restoration of sponge communities can reestablish natural underwater soundscapes. Soundscapes of each habitat were examined using several acoustic metrics, including spectral analysis and counts of fish calls and snapping shrimp snaps. Mangrove, healthy hard-bottom, and restored hard-bottom habitats had higher soundscape spectra levels than seagrass and degraded hard-bottom whether at noon or dusk during new or full moons. Low-frequency sounds, most likely fish calls in the ~300Hz frequency range, were most prevalent in mangroves during dusk full moons. There were also higher numbers of snapping shrimp snaps in mangrove, healthy hard-bottom, and restored hard-bottom habitats than in degraded hard-bottom and seagrass beds, especially during the prominent dusk snapping shrimp chorus. Our results demonstrate that near-shore tropical habitats have unique soundscapes that are diminished by habitat degradation, but can be reestablished by habitat restoration, at least in the case of sponge-dominated hard-bottom.

Sonic Explorations of the Southernmost Continent: Four composers’ responses to Antarctica and climate change in the twenty-first century

Composers have been drawn to the world’s southernmost continent, Antarctica, for creative inspiration since the so-called ‘Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration’ in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. However, it has only been since the final few years of the twentieth century that professional composers have had opportunities to travel to the far south as part of arts residency programmes to experience its environment – and its unique soundscapes – first-hand. Most composers who have visited Antarctica to date have utilised sound recording technologies to document their journeys sonically and have subsequently created compositions that feature their soundscape recordings. Typically, such compositions include biological sounds, such as vocalisations of penguins and seals (both on the ice and underwater); non-biological or ‘geophysical’ ambient sounds that emanate from the natural landscape, such as those created by wind, blizzards, and ice cracking and calving; and/or anthropogenic (human) sounds recorded within the Antarctic environment.This article examines a series of recent compositions by four established composers who have visited Antarctica and used their experiences and field recordings to inform their creative work: Douglas Quin, Jay Needham, Lawrence English and Philip Samartzis. The primary aim of this research is to investigate what these composers’ Antarctica-related works reveal about their individual encounters with and perceptions of the frozen continent, as well as to consider the role of such compositions in conveying messages related to climate change to listeners around the globe – the vast majority of whom are unlikely to ever see orhearthe place in person.

Awareness of Noise Hazards and the Value of Soundscapes in Polish National Parks

Abstract The goal of the studies undertaken in Polish national parks was to determine noise threats, examine the resources, assess the quality of soundscapes and identify the possibilities of their protection. The questionnaire method used in the studies made it possible to identify the awareness of noise threats and the value of soundscapes according to the park service staff. In addition, the semantic differential and description methods were used to learn how students assessed the soundscape quality of Polish national parks. Finally, avenues of further research on soundscape in environmentally valuable areas were indicated. The research findings indicate that each national park in Poland is characterised by diverse and unique soundscapes and is subject to the pressure of road traffic and tourism resulting in noise hazards. The conservation of the acoustic values of parks is necessary and possible.

Examination of valued attributes of low sound level environments

The introduction of new noise sources into rural environments presents a number of unique community response challenges not typically encountered in urban and suburban environments. Low ambient sound levels combined with intermittently (rather than continuously) audible anthropogenic ambient contributors create unique soundscapes. Residents appear to value many attributes of these soundscapes and wish to preserve and protect them. Application of existing standards and guidelines (quantitative or nuisance-based) often does not meet resident expectations of protection. This paper examines a number of the valued attributes. It then asks questions about noise policy, resident expectations, adequacy of existing standards, source and ambient noise quantification, and the masking of valued attributes by a new noise source. It concludes with a list of issues that bear close examination in order to set future noise impact guidelines for low-ambient environments.

Sound is the New Light

Over the past thirty years or so, film has become entranced by sound. A tide of innovations in sound recording and playback technology has transformed cinematic culture in much the same way that other technologies—the optical soundtrack, the deep-focus lens, color emulsion, and cinemascope—did in the past. Filmmakers now can exploit the psychology of sonic perception to create their worlds, which means that the range of suggested dimensions expands far outside the focal limits of vision and the screen. And since sound is vaguer than sight (sound sources are hard to locate) and subtler (we cannot close our ears as we can our eyes), the possibilities for entraining the audience to the rhythm of the screen action is increased exponentially. With new sound techniques, today’s films can deliver deeper intimacies and more immersive spectacles than classical cinema. The new sound technologies enable filmmakers to use sound as music. Unlike visual stimuli, sound inputs can be layered into complex, dynamic, simultaneous arrangements. Distinct timbres, volumes, thematic lines, and spatial arrangements can be structured into symphonic weaves. All aspects of sound can become parts of a single acoustical design. In classical film, the job of sound was to anchor the visual image and to clarify the characters’ speaking voices. The sound engineer’s job was that of a guild craftsman, to reproduce the conventions of a stylized, formulaic world. Sound effects were drawn from studio sound libraries, and sound editing was often the last phase of postproduction, when all the rough spots were finally smoothed over with reasondamping sonic sutures. The new technologies allow sound engineers to construct their own sound effects, to surround listeners with shifting sound patterns, to modulate from ambient noise to music at the thresholds of awareness—in short, to create unique and powerful soundscapes that will make willing audiences accept any image without resistance. The lowly mixers and sound editors who turned off the studio lights have become sound designers. Their status in the artistic hierarchy of film production is now as great as the cinematographer’s, since they perform the functions of f/x producers, editors, and even set designers, over and above recording and mixing. In its fusion of mimetic recording and synthetic fantasy, film sound has matched, and in many cases exceeded, the visual image in its power to control an audience’s attention. Sf film has long been viewed as having a privileged role in this development. Many of the leading sound designers have worked on trend-setting sf films—Walter Murch (THX-1138 [1971]), Gary Rudstrom (Terminator 2: