Effects of natural sounds on the perception of road traffic noise

De Coensel, Bert; Vanwetswinkel, Sofie; Botteldooren, Dick · 2011 · Crossref

DOI: 10.1121/1.3567073

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Summary

This study investigates whether introducing natural sounds, specifically from fountains or birds, can mitigate the negative perception of road traffic noise in urban environments. While previous research indicated that water features could mask traffic noise, it remained unclear under which conditions these additions improve overall soundscape quality, particularly regarding loudness, pleasantness, and eventfulness. The authors aimed to determine if adding natural sounds reduces the perceived loudness of traffic noise with varying temporal characteristics and whether this reduction correlates with improved subjective soundscape quality. The researchers conducted a laboratory listening experiment with 100 participants. Stimuli were created by combining binaural recordings of three types of road traffic noise—freeway (low temporal variability), major road (intermediate variability), and minor road (high variability)—with fountain or bird sounds at various signal-to-noise ratios. Participants performed two tasks: a paired comparison test to assess the relative loudness of the traffic noise within each stimulus, and a semantic differential test to rate the overall pleasantness and eventfulness of the soundscape. Data from the paired comparisons were analyzed using the Bradley–Terry–Luce probabilistic choice model to derive a ratio scale for perceived loudness. The results revealed distinct effects based on the type of natural sound and traffic noise. Adding fountain sound significantly reduced the perceived loudness of traffic noise only when the traffic had low temporal variability (freeway) or, in some cases, intermediate variability (major road). It did not reduce the perceived loudness of high-variability minor road traffic. Conversely, adding bird sound significantly enhanced both the pleasantness and eventfulness of the soundscape across almost all conditions, outperforming fountain sounds in these subjective metrics. Fountain sounds improved pleasantness only for major road traffic and eventfulness only for freeway traffic. The authors suggest that auditory attention is drawn to sounds with high temporal variability, which may explain why natural sounds failed to mask the loudness of variable traffic noise. The study concludes that reducing the perceived loudness of unwanted noise is insufficient for improving overall soundscape quality. While fountain sounds can effectively mask stationary traffic noise, bird sounds are more effective at enhancing the subjective quality of the environment through increased pleasantness and eventfulness. These findings imply that acoustic design in urban planning must address the semantic meaning and perceptual attributes of sounds, rather than focusing solely on energetic masking or loudness reduction.

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• auditory