Subject: Re: Shape of background noise From: Brian Gygi <bgygi@xxxxxxxx> Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 13:23:05 -0700 List-Archive:<http://lists.mcgill.ca/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=AUDITORY>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