Noise engineering now targets annoyance and quality, not just hearing loss

Evidence

Since the 1980s, the investigation of noise control techniques has been increasingly directed also towards qualitative aspects, that is, noise quality (Marquis-Favre et al., 2005b), not only to simple quantitative measures, such as the A-weighted sound level for estimating the risk of noise-induced hearing loss. Earlier studies on the subjective effects of noise also exist, but the signal-analysis-based approach was introduced to understand such effects as annoyance caused by noise. This gradual shift of focus is natural, since, in many cases, hearing loss is not the primary problem anymore and quality-of-life aspects are found to be increasingly important. — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 2320

Categorization

• XREF: Directly connects to the reader’s existing knowledge base on noise, silence, and soundscape — annoyance-based noise metrics expand on A-weighted exposure measures.