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Applied Sciences
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Recent Advances in Soundscape and Environmental Noise
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Recent Advances in Soundscape and Environmental Noise

A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Acoustics and Vibrations".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 10 July 2025 | Viewed by 7505

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Masayuki Takada

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Acoustic Design, Faculty of Design, Kyushu University, Fukuoka 815-8540, Japan
Interests: psychoacoustics; sound quality; environmental acoustics; soundscape; sound design
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The study of soundscapes is an emerging, interdisciplinary area of acoustics. It includes the investigation of environmental sounds and environmental background noise. New methodologies have been published as international standards (i.e., ISO 12913-1:2014, ISO/TS 12913-2:2018, ISO/TS 12913-3:2019), and soundscape analysis and environmental noise research have made rapid progress in recent years. Of course, research on community response and epidemiological studies on noise, which provide the rational basis for various guidelines and standards for noise, are also very important. These qualitative and quantitative approaches should be helpful to create a healthy acoustic environment.

Given this context, this Special Issue aims to collect original research papers on soundscape analysis and environmental noise. The Guest Editors hope that the high-quality papers in this Special Issue will contribute to the development of the field. Topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Soundscape;
  • Soundscape analysis;
  • Environmental noise;
  • Ambient noise;
  • Community noise;
  • Environmental acoustics.

Dr. Masayuki Takada
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Applied Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

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Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

18 pages, 2059 KiB  
Article
Estimation of the Occurrence and Significance of Noise Effects on Pedestrians Using Acoustic Variables Related to Sound Energy in Urban Environments
by Juan Miguel Barrigón Morillas, David Montes González, Rosendo Vílchez-Gómez and Guillermo Rey-Gozalo
Appl. Sci. 2024, 14(23), 11212; https://doi.org/10.3390/app142311212 - 2 Dec 2024
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 806
Abstract
The impact of environmental noise on the health and well-being of people living in cities is an issue that has been addressed in the scientific literature to try to develop effective environmental policies. In this context, road traffic is the main source of [...] Read more.
The impact of environmental noise on the health and well-being of people living in cities is an issue that has been addressed in the scientific literature to try to develop effective environmental policies. In this context, road traffic is the main source of noise in urban environments, but it is not the only source of noise that pedestrians hear. This paper presents an experimental study using in situ surveys and acoustic measurements to analyse the capacity of acoustic variables related to sound energy to estimate the occurrence and importance of noise effects in urban environments. The results revealed that average sound energy indicators can be considered most significant in terms of the perception of the noise effects studied on pedestrians. When estimating noise effects from them, frequency weightings related to flat or nearly flat spectra (Z and C weightings) were found to provide better results than an A weighting; however, it was also concluded that if the average energy is considered, the use of a temporal I weighting did not lead to improvements. The perception of how noisy a street is, it is strongly associated with a low frequency, and annoyance was the effect that generally showed the strongest significant correlations with acoustic indicators. The indicators of minimum sound levels explained a larger proportion of the variability of noise effects than the indicators of maximum energy; they were even better in this regard than any of the average energy indicators in terms of explaining the variability of startle and annoyance in the ears, and they were found to be equivalent when interruption of a telephone conversation was assessed. Both acoustic variables associated with sound energy in different parts of the audible spectrum and Leq in each one-third octave band showed significant correlations with the effects of noise on pedestrians. Similarities in the structure of the spectra were found between some of these effects. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Advances in Soundscape and Environmental Noise)
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17 pages, 5072 KiB  
Article
Perceived Soundscape Experiences and Human Emotions in Urban Green Spaces: Application of Russell’s Circumplex Model of Affect
by Yuting Yin, Yuhan Shao, Yiying Hao and Xian Lu
Appl. Sci. 2024, 14(13), 5828; https://doi.org/10.3390/app14135828 - 3 Jul 2024
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2445
Abstract
Humans perceive their surrounding environments largely through their experiences of sight and hearing. The perceived environmental information then brings on neurophysiological changes, so as to influence human emotions. These mutually influenced relations have been widely utilized by many environmental psychologists to explore potential [...] Read more.
Humans perceive their surrounding environments largely through their experiences of sight and hearing. The perceived environmental information then brings on neurophysiological changes, so as to influence human emotions. These mutually influenced relations have been widely utilized by many environmental psychologists to explore potential avenues for improving human emotions through design interventions. However, to date, no efficient and accurate way has been established to describe these relationships. Inspired by Russell’s model of emotion, this study aims to develop an efficient process that uses coordinate mapping and can intuitively describe the impact of visual-aural perceptive attributes on human emotions. Taking typical urban green spaces (UGSs) in Chengdu as examples, this study first measured the visual and aural characteristics of study sites perceived by people and their emotional responses. The study then established the use of emotional status on a coordinate axis, allowing each visual-aural attribute corresponding to each emotional response to be projected onto the coordinates. Results suggested that the dataset composed of 279 evaluations could be classified into three distinct types of visual-aural settings and the distribution of emotions is evidently varied in different settings. It was found that aesthetic and order of visual aspects as well as eventful and harmonious soundscape in environments are more likely to make people feel pleasure, while openness and layering of the visual landscape can easily arouse people’s positive status. The research outcome broadens the practical path of soundscape research, centring on human emotions, experiences and feelings, such as the pleasantness and arousal raised in Russell’s theory of emotion. The study also makes an empirical contribution to the design of UGSs based on multi-sensory perception and serves the purpose of improving people’s environmental experiences. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Advances in Soundscape and Environmental Noise)
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16 pages, 2509 KiB  
Article
Effect of the Exterior Traffic Noises on the Sound Environment Evaluation in Office Spaces with Different Interior Noise Conditions
by Boya Yu, Yuying Chai and Chao Wang
Appl. Sci. 2024, 14(7), 3017; https://doi.org/10.3390/app14073017 - 3 Apr 2024
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1621
Abstract
The present study focuses on the impact of exterior traffic noises on sound environment evaluation in office spaces, considering their interaction with interior noises. There were three interior noise conditions: silence, air-conditioner noise, and irrelevant speech noise. Six exterior traffic noises (road, maglev, [...] Read more.
The present study focuses on the impact of exterior traffic noises on sound environment evaluation in office spaces, considering their interaction with interior noises. There were three interior noise conditions: silence, air-conditioner noise, and irrelevant speech noise. Six exterior traffic noises (road, maglev, tram, metro, conventional inter-city train, and high-speed train) were merged with interior noise clips to create the combined noise stimuli. Forty subjects participated in the experiment to assess the acoustic environment in office spaces exposed to multiple noises. The results showed that both interior and exterior noise significantly affected acoustic comfort and noise disturbance. As for the exterior traffic noise, both the traffic noise source and the noise level were found to be influential on both attributes. More temporally fluctuating traffic noises, such as high-speed train noise, were found to have a greater negative effect on subjective evaluations. Meanwhile, the interior noise source was also found to influence evaluations of the sound environment. Compared to the single traffic noise condition, irrelevant speech noise significantly increased the negative impact of traffic noises, while the air-conditioner noise had a neutral effect. In addition, participants in offices with speech noise were less sensitive to the traffic noise level. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Advances in Soundscape and Environmental Noise)
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12 pages, 12428 KiB  
Article
Directional Suppression of Monotone Noises with A Parametric Array Loudspeaker
by Han Wang, Jingxiao Zhang, Lin Gan and Yu Liu
Appl. Sci. 2023, 13(12), 6868; https://doi.org/10.3390/app13126868 - 6 Jun 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1656
Abstract
Monotone noises at high decibels have been identified as a main cause of degradation in people’s mental health. This paper proposes a directional monotone noise reduction method to suppress spatially localized single-frequency noises. The system is designed based on a feedforward active noise [...] Read more.
Monotone noises at high decibels have been identified as a main cause of degradation in people’s mental health. This paper proposes a directional monotone noise reduction method to suppress spatially localized single-frequency noises. The system is designed based on a feedforward active noise control (ANC) structure by implementing filtered-x least mean square (FxLMS) algorithms. Compared with traditional ANC methods, our system employs a parametric array loudspeaker (PAL) as the active noise-canceling source with high audio directivity for directional noise suppression. The system monitors the ambient monotone noise and implements the ANC algorithm in real-time through a software-based platform operating on a generic personal computer (PC). Experimental measurements demonstrate an 8dB reduction of different monotone noises at a 260cm distance from the active source. Compared with traditional ANC methods with a voice coil loudspeaker (VCL) as the noise-canceling source, our PAL-based system achieves similar noise suppression performance with a 5.8 times improvement in the source-to-target distance and 64% reduction in the −3dB audio main lobe beam width. The results prove the advantage of introducing PALs as active-noise-canceling sources for monotone noise suppression with a cost-effective enhancement in operating distances and noise control directivities. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Advances in Soundscape and Environmental Noise)
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