Speaker
Description
Most guidelines involve a penalty procedure, if noise contains features which increase noise annoyance, such as impulsive or tonal components. In most guidelines, the penalty is a constant, k [dB], that is added to the measured sound level, LAeq [dB]. The adjusted sound level, LAeq+k, is expected to describe noise annoyance better than LAeq alone. However, soundscapes, both indoors and outdoors, have very often a broadband steady-state (BBSS) nature, which lack temporal variations and tonal features. Evidence suggests that the annoyance of BBSS sound depends on spectrum shape. Our purpose is to summarize the psychoacoustic research, which developed a model to calculate the penalty of a BBSS sound, when the spectrum is measured in 1/3-octave bands. Kuusinen et al. (2023) reported the noise annoyance of 23 spectrally different BBSS sounds at levels 32, 40, and 48 dB LAeq. The annoyance penalty values were within 0 and +12 dB, which suggests that penalty is justified also for BBSS sounds. The penalty obtained for a specific BBSS sound was independent on sound level within 3248 dB LAeq which supports that their penalty values might be applied also beyond that range. In the follow-up study, Kuusinen & Hongisto (2026) developed a calculation model, which reproduced the experimentally determined annoyance penalty values with high reliability (R2=0.79). The input variable of the model was spectral centroid, which is calculated from the 1/3-octave band spectrum of BBSS sound. The model can be applied in the assessment of noise annoyance for measurements conducted outdoors and indoors.