Subject: Re: Audibility of fire alarms From: Brad Ingrao <info(at)bradingrao.com> Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2004 08:49:15 -0400Thank you very much for this Guillaume. Brad -----Original Message----- From: Guillaume Lemaitre [mailto:lemaitre(at)ircam.fr] Sent: Monday, September 20, 2004 8:33 AM To: info(at)bradingrao.com Cc: AUDITORY(at)LISTS.MCGILL.CA Subject: Re: Audibility of fire alarms Dear Brad, I recently had to deal with the problem of warning signals and particularly seek to map acoustic parameters and warning messages. This not quite exactly the topic you are adressing but I give in the atteched file (sorry, part of it is in french) some references related to warning signals design. Roughly speaking, there are 4 main approaches: * Acoustical approach (ref. [18]): The acoustical signal has to reach a given acoustical level everywhere it has to be heard * Psycho-acoustical approach (ref. [2] [5] [9]): The audiblity threshold of the warning signals have to very low, for the typical background noise in which they are used. * Urgency approach (ref. [7] [15] [16] [27]): The urgency feeling conveyed by the signals have to match the urgency of the situation * Cognitive and semiotic approach (ref. [1] [3] [6] [12] [13]): The signal does not only convey an alarm but a warning message, which has to tell the listener what's happening precisely. I hope this can be useful for you, Regards Guillaume ------------------------------------------------------------------- Guillaume Lemaitre, Ph.D. Post-doctoral fellow Project-team REVES (REndering and Virtual Environments with Sounds) INRIA Sophia-Antipolis tel: (+33) (0)4 92 38 50 83 2004 route des Lucioles fax: (+33) (0)4 92 38 50 30 BP 93, F-06902 Sophia-Antipolis Guillaume.Lemaitre(at)sophia.inria.fr, -------------------------------------------------------------------