Bird song masks noise better than water by adding meaning, not just energy
Evidence
An experiment is described by De Coensel et al. (2011) asking 100 volunteers (45 women, 55 men) to evaluate in the laboratory the effect of waterfalls and bird song to mask road traffic by binaural acoustic files. The addition of fountain sound reduced the loudness of the traffic noise only when the traffic noise had a low temporal variability, less pulsing, but the addition of the sound of singing birds significantly enhanced soundscape pleasantness and eventfulness, more than the addition of water sounds. This experiment clearly demonstrates that the loudness of unwanted sounds should not be the only direction in acoustic design but that the soundscape quality is strongly influenced by the meaning associated with the different sounds. — Almo Farina, Soundscape Ecology, 2408
Categorization
- SEED: Birdsong beats fountain sounds in lab masking trials — a concrete, citable empirical nugget for an essay on why natural sounds outperform engineered soundscaping.
- XREF: Pays off the reader’s claim that natural sounds relax humans more than anthropogenic ones (ch22) with a controlled masking experiment. — connects to: Natural sounds relax humans physiologically more than human sounds do. — Almo Farina, Soundscape Ecology: Principles,…, 1093; Pleasant sounds can mask traffic noise only at low amplitudes — Almo Farina, Soundscape Ecology: Principles,…, 2470; Attention to birdsong converts undifferentiated noise into discrete meaningful perceptions — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 63 (+2 more)
Broader Connections
- Attention to birdsong converts undifferentiated noise into discrete meaningful perceptions
#corroborates(0.82) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 63 - Ambient noise impairs birds’ territory defense and mate attraction
#complicates(0.75) — Gordon Hempton, John Grossmann, One Square Inch of Silence- One Man’s…, 942 - Adding soft noise can make music subjectively sound more brilliant
#complicates(0.72)