Pleasantness of typical acoustic environments inside a living room in a European residential context

Romain Dedieu (1, 2) , Catherine Lavandier (1, 3) , Cédric Camier (2) , Sylvain Berger (2)

1 ETIS - UMR 8051 - Equipes Traitement de l'Information et Systèmes
2 SGR - Saint-Gobain Recherche
3 Neurocybernétique

Acoustic comfort defined in first approach as the absence of unwanted sounds and the quality of desired sounds while doing an activity arouses a growing interest in sociology, psychology and building industry. Comfort is influenced by the acoustic performances of building, by the various types of sound sources, and by individual aspects (sociological background, musical preferences etc.). A study based on three perceptive tests aims to address these aspects. The first perceptive test consists in the evaluation of pleasantness for various sound sources according to their semantic content and their origin (from the neighbor, the outside, or the room). Thus, 67 focused listeners rated the pleasantness of every stimulus. Statistical analysis showed a consensus on intrusive sounds coming from outside, people preferring bird songs and rejecting site work sounds. For intrusive sounds coming from neighbors, there is also a consensus, people preferring classical music and rejecting human sounds. Participants can be clustered in two groups, one preferring nature sounds and the other preferring music sounds. Moreover, the ratings of the human sound pleasantness (diner, laughs, etc.) are influenced by the sound sensitivity of the participant, the more sensitive the less pleasant the sound.

Mots clés: Perception; Comfort; Building

Domaines: Sciences de l'ingénieur [physics]; Acoustique [physics.class-ph]

Romain Dedieu, Catherine Lavandier, Cédric Camier, Sylvain Berger. Pleasantness of typical acoustic environments inside a living room in a European residential context. International Congress of Acoustics, Sep 2019, Aachen, Germany. ⟨hal-02489915⟩