What are the Current Priorities and Challenges for (Urban) Soundscape Research?

Aletta, Francesco; Xiao, Jieling

doi:10.3390/challe9010016

Cited by 45 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 29 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…On the other side, lowering sound pressure levels were proved to be insufficiently effective for achieving acoustic comfort [22]. For these reasons, analyzing perception of both positive and negative sound sources, overall quality of acoustic environments and its relations with non-auditory factors has been largely investigated within the soundscape discourse [23][24][25]. Recently, it has also been looked into finding means of successfully using qualitative and quantitative indicators to achieve acoustically pleasing spaces [6,26,27].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Method A relies on a soundwalk in situ, one of the main soundscape research tools [6,25,26,32]-an act of walking through a setting with a focus on critical listening to the sounds that can be heard there [33]. In an urban environment, its aim is to collect audio data and grasp a mental representation of a city and its public space by combining soundscape with urban morphological features [34,35].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Using Virtual Soundwalk Approach for Assessing Sound Art Soundscape Interventions in Public Spaces

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper discusses the soundscape assessment approaches to soundscape interventions with musical features introduced to public spaces as permanent sound art, with a focus on the ISO 12913 series, Method A for data collection applied in a laboratory study. Three soundscape interventions in three cities are investigated. The virtual soundwalk is used to combine the benefits of the on-site and laboratory settings. Two measurement points per location were recorded—one at a position where the intervention was clearly perceptible, the other further away to serve as a baseline condition. The participants (N = 44) were exposed to acoustic environments (N = 6) recorded using the first-order Ambisonics microphone on-site and then reproduced via the second-order Ambisonics system in laboratory. A series of rank-based Kruskal–Wallis tests were performed on the results of the subjective responses. Results revealed a statistically significant positive effect on soundscape at two locations, and limitations related to sound source identification due to cultural factors and geometrical configuration of the public space at one location.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using Virtual Soundwalk Approach for Assessing Sound Art Soundscape Interventions in Public Spaces

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This allows researchers to study the cause-and-effect relationship between dependent and independent variables, but at the likely expense of ecological validity, owing to the artificiality of the controlled virtual acoustic environment. Hence, the quality of acoustic recordings and reproduction techniques plays a vital role in achieving sufficiently high ecological validity under laboratory conditions throughout the soundscape design process [2,6].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quality assessment of acoustic environment reproduction methods for cinematic virtual reality in soundscape applications

Hong

Lam

Ong

et al. 2019

Building and Environment

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

With the advent of virtual reality (VR) technology, spatial audio has been increasingly adopted to evaluate the acoustic environment in soundscape research. It is therefore imperative to assess the quality of commonly used spatial audio reproduction methods to determine their ecological validity. Through subjective evaluations with 30 participants, the same participant evaluated four outdoor in situ locations vis-à-vis its corresponding audio-visual recording in VR on a separate day. A total of three spatial audio reproduction methods were assessed in VR, and they were all down-mixed from the first-order ambisonics (FOA) recordings to headphonebased FOA-static binaural, FOA-tracked binaural; and FOA 2-dimensional (2D) octagonal speaker array. The participants evaluated the acoustic environment in terms of the overall soundscape quality and perceived spatial qualities at each location. Regarding overall soundscape quality, there were no significant differences in evaluating the sound-source dominance and affective soundscape qualities between in situ and all VR methods. However, significant differences were found in the perceived spatial qualities between three reproduction methods and in situ. Among the source-related spatial attributes, the perceived distance of the dominating sounds was farther in the virtual than in the in situ evaluations. In the localization of sound sources, both the FOA-tracked binaural and the FOA-2D speaker array exhibited higher spatial acoustic fidelity than FOA-static binaural. Regarding the environment-related spatial quality attributes, the 2D speaker array reproduction was perceived as more immersive and realistic than other reproduction methods. Overall, the FOA-tracked binaural appears to exhibit sufficient fidelity for cinematic VR evaluation of soundscapes.

show abstract

“…Therefore, alternative assessment methods should also be sought. While the body of soundscape literature is still growing steadily, there is limited understanding of what is the (measurable) impact of soundscape science [5]. Thus it is important to explore: "What is the outreach of soundscape research?…”

Section: A Soundscape Framework: From Research To Outreachingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Aletta and Xiao [5] reported that more than 2400 soundscape-related papers have been published in peer-reviewed international journals in the last 20 years. Notwithstanding, soundscape has not always been successful at attracting attention from world-wide policy makers and, consequently, awareness among community stakeholders.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Impact and Outreach of Soundscape Research

Kang

Aletta

2018

Environments

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Soundscape has been growing steadily as a research field since its interdisciplinary concepts were first introduced about 50 years ago in music theory and acoustic ecology, and it currently affects a broad spectrum of disciplines ranging from social sciences to urban planning and noise control engineering. In spite of its strong research appeal, it is not clear what the actual impact and outreach of soundscape science is at a societal level; that is: how soundscape research is received by community. Using the Altmetric database, this review aims to map how and where soundscape research is "mentioned", considering the number of mentions over time, their geographical spread and effectiveness of publication outlets. Results show that mentions are growing with time, they mostly originate in the United States and the United Kingdom, and they are generated by a limited number of research items.

show abstract

What are the Current Priorities and Challenges for (Urban) Soundscape Research?

Cited by 45 publications

References 29 publications

Using Virtual Soundwalk Approach for Assessing Sound Art Soundscape Interventions in Public Spaces

Using Virtual Soundwalk Approach for Assessing Sound Art Soundscape Interventions in Public Spaces

Quality assessment of acoustic environment reproduction methods for cinematic virtual reality in soundscape applications

The Impact and Outreach of Soundscape Research

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About