Towards soundscape fingerprinting: Development, analysis and assessment of underlying acoustic dimensions to describe acoustic environments

Research output: Thesis › Doctoral thesis

Authors

  • Lutz Jakob Bergner

Research Organisations

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Details

Original languageEnglish
QualificationDoctor of Engineering
Awarding Institution
Supervised by
  • Jürgen Karl Peissig, Supervisor
Date of Award27 Apr 2023
Place of PublicationHannover
Publication statusPublished - 2023

Abstract

Soundscape according to the definition in ISO 12913-1 describes an acoustic environment as perceived by humans in context. In order to be able to assess a soundscape holistically, the components acoustic environment, person and context should be described sufficiently to enable triangulation. Person-based soundscape assessment has been the subject of extensive research over the past decades to date, leading to a good understanding of the main emotional dimensions. On the acoustic side, e.g., in modeling emotional responses by acoustic features, parameters describing loudness are widely used, also from the point of view of legal regulations. These parameters are often complemented by established psychoacoustic measures. However, it is unknown to what extent these parameters are suitable to adequately describe and compare acoustic environments for hypotheses concerning humans. The presented dissertation aims to contribute to this field by means of an exploratory, empirical, and data-based approach. First, the general requirements of the aim – the description of acoustic environments – are defined and accompanied with concepts and findings from current research areas. Subsequently a methodology is developed that allows for the identification of underlying acoustic dimensions on the basis of empirical observational data of real world acoustic environments by means of multivariate statistical methods. It contains considerations on the physical sound field, the human auditory system, as well as appropriate signal processing techniques. The methodology is then applied to an exemplary extensive dataset of various Ambisonics soundscape recordings. The resulting expressions of the acoustic dimensions are evaluated and discussed with respect to plausibility and perceptual consistency. Finally, two application examples are presented to further validate the methodology and to test the applicability of acoustic dimensions in concrete research scenarios. It was found that the presented methodology is suitable to identify dimensions for the description of acoustic environments. Furthermore, the dimensions found form a suitable basis for further soundscape analyses.

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title = "Towards soundscape fingerprinting: Development, analysis and assessment of underlying acoustic dimensions to describe acoustic environments",
abstract = "Soundscape according to the definition in ISO 12913-1 describes an acoustic environment as perceived by humans in context. In order to be able to assess a soundscape holistically, the components acoustic environment, person and context should be described sufficiently to enable triangulation. Person-based soundscape assessment has been the subject of extensive research over the past decades to date, leading to a good understanding of the main emotional dimensions. On the acoustic side, e.g., in modeling emotional responses by acoustic features, parameters describing loudness are widely used, also from the point of view of legal regulations. These parameters are often complemented by established psychoacoustic measures. However, it is unknown to what extent these parameters are suitable to adequately describe and compare acoustic environments for hypotheses concerning humans. The presented dissertation aims to contribute to this field by means of an exploratory, empirical, and data-based approach. First, the general requirements of the aim – the description of acoustic environments – are defined and accompanied with concepts and findings from current research areas. Subsequently a methodology is developed that allows for the identification of underlying acoustic dimensions on the basis of empirical observational data of real world acoustic environments by means of multivariate statistical methods. It contains considerations on the physical sound field, the human auditory system, as well as appropriate signal processing techniques. The methodology is then applied to an exemplary extensive dataset of various Ambisonics soundscape recordings. The resulting expressions of the acoustic dimensions are evaluated and discussed with respect to plausibility and perceptual consistency. Finally, two application examples are presented to further validate the methodology and to test the applicability of acoustic dimensions in concrete research scenarios. It was found that the presented methodology is suitable to identify dimensions for the description of acoustic environments. Furthermore, the dimensions found form a suitable basis for further soundscape analyses.",
author = "Bergner, {Lutz Jakob}",
note = "Doctoral thesis",
year = "2023",
doi = "10.15488/13578",
language = "English",
school = "Leibniz University Hannover",

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PY - 2023

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