Psychoacoustical characteristics of heavy-weight impact sounds in concrete floors

Abstract

Subjective evaluations of heavy-weight impact sounds generated by an impact ball (heavy/soft impact source) were conducted in apartment buildings with box frame-type reinforced concrete structures. Variations of frequency characteristics were found in the measurement results, thus these were classified into three groups according to frequency characteristics. Auditory experiments were conducted to characterize the classified impact sound groups and to evaluate the annoyance to impact ball sounds through paired comparison and semantic differential tests. The results show that the impact ball sounds with a dominant sound pressure level at 250 Hz was most annoying. Sound quality metrics were used to explain the annoyance of heavy-weight floor impact sounds. The annoyance obtained from the paired comparison test was well correlated with loudness, roughness and fluctuation strength. In the semantic differential test, it was found that the adjectives describing the loudness had a greater role in affecting the subjects' annoyance.