Evaluating aural comfort in tropical high-rise environment

Abstract

This study endeavours the evaluation of daytime 'Acoustic Comfort' among the high-rise apartment dwellers in tropical Singapore. Based on a holistic evaluation framework that is founded on Stallen's (1999) theory of noise annoyance and the profound theory of Evaluation Response Model (ERM), a multinomial logistic regression model for aural comfort is developed. The comfort model has been established based on extensive noise survey and objective evaluation of the aural environment of the subjects. Aural comfort is found related to the noise exposure level, the subjective perceptions of noisiness within the apartments and the level of subjective disturbances due to dominant noise sources that includes road traffic noise and train noise. The validation of the model has been done through a psychoacoustical investigation in laboratory environment. Absolute evaluation, mixed evaluation and paired-comparison evaluation techniques have been used for subjective evaluation of the binaurally recorded objective sound levels in laboratory environment. The analysis shows that 'moderate' favourable subjective perception is observed in semantic space for road traffic sound at a level of 55 dB(A), at a mean loudness of 10 sone and at a five percentile roughness of 28 centi-asper. For train noise, a 'moderate' favourable subjective perceptions is observed in semantic space at a level of 56 dB(A), at a five percentile loudness of 10 sone, at a five percentile sharpness of 1.35 acum and at a mean roughness of 26 centi-asper.