Re: Shape of background noise

[Brian Gygi <bgygi@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hornsby, Benjamin Wade Young wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I’m looking for some basic references showing spectra of “common” 
> background noises (i.e. restaurant, office, outside near a street, 
> etc…). I imagine there is some classic reference that (similar to 
> Pearsons et al., for the speech people) that provides this type of 
> data but I’ve not been able to find it. Any suggestions would be 
> greatly appreciated. Thanks Much,
>
> Ben

Ben

I did a study testing identification of thirty different auditory scenes 
(including restaurants, offices, streets and more) and I looked at 
various acoustical attributes of the scenes, including spectral slope, 
spread, centroid etc. I can send you those data if you like. Also there 
have been a few published studies of ambient sounds. Generally, sounds 
with a mixture of several different types of sources tend to a 1/f 
spectrum, although there are of course differences.

Hodgson, M. R., Rempel. R.& Kennedy, S. (1997). “Measurement and 
prediction of typical speech and background noise levels in university 
classrooms during lectures,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 105(1), 226-233.

De Coensel, B. Botteldooren, D., & De Muer , T. (2003). “1/f Noise in 
Rural and Urban Soundscapes.” Acta Acust. Un. Acust., 89, 287-295 .

Dick Botteldooren, Bert De Coensel, and Tom De Muer (2002) 1/f dynamics 
in the urban soundscape (A) J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 112, 2436

H. F. Boersma: Characterization of the natural ambient sound 
environment: Measurements in open agricultural grassland. J. Acoust. 
Soc. Am. 101 (1997) 2104–2110.

Regards

Brian Gygi, Ph.D.
East Bay Institute for Research and Education
Martinez, CA