Psychoacoustic metrics in the psychological diagnosis of noise annoyance

Aim of the study was to asses noise annoyance in relation to psychoacoustic metrics of sound in an office environment. The Vienna Test System was used for this purpose. Virtual office acoustic environments were developed with sources of different psychoacoustic parameters (loudness, sharpness, fluctuation strength, roughness) but with a constant A-weighted sound pressure level of 55 dB – sound environment with conversations, sound environment with office equipment (computers, printers, telephones) and sound environment with all office noise sources together. The reference environment was a quiet office room with no additional noise sources. Recorded real noise sources were transferred to a virtual 3D sound environment and converted into binaural sound, which was then played back on headphones. During the exposure to each of the acoustic environments, the subjects performed the ALS test (work performance series) and COG test (measurement of attention and concentration) and then assessed the given environment using a questionnaire. The paper presents the results of the statistical analysis – despite different psychoacoustic metrics of office noise sources in the examined acoustic environments, no statistically significant differences were observed in the results of psychological tests.