Yes / There is increasing concern with protecting quiet and tranquil areas from intrusive noise. Noise reduction at source and barriers to transmission are mitigation measures often considered. An alternative is to attempt to mask or distract attention away from the noise source. The masking or distracting sound source should be pleasant so that it does not add to any irritation caused by the noise source alone. The laboratory measurements described in this paper consisted of capturing under controlled conditions the third octave band spectra of water falling onto water, gravel, bricks and small boulders and various combinations. These spectra were then matched with typical traffic noise spectra to assess the degree of masking that could be expected for each option. Recordings were also taken during each measurement and these were used later to enable the subjective assessment of the tranquility of the sounds. It was found that there were differences between water sounds both in terms of masking and their subjective impact on tranquility.

Loudness recruitment is an abnormally rapid growth of perceived loudness above the hearing threshold that slows to normal growth as the intensity of the signal increases. Recruitment is common in sensorineural hearing loss and in simulated hearing loss with noise masking. This study looked at possible differences in loudness recruitment with age, noise level, and frequency. Participants from two age groups were tested. Group A included participants aged 18 to 30 years and Group B included participants aged 50 to 75 years. Participants practiced the Alternate Binaural Loudness Balance (ABLB) test without noise present. They then repeated the tests with masking noise. Tests were completed with two different noise levels (50 dB SPL and 70 dB SPL), and two different test tone frequencies (1000 Hz and 2000 Hz). Participants identified loudness matching points to reference intensities of 20, 40, 60, and 80 dB HL. Participants completed 3 trials at each intensity level. Difference scores of the intensity of the loudness matching point minus the intensity of the reference tone were computed and analyzed statistically. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) for repeated measures fails to show significance for between-subjects effect for age, within subject effect for frequency, and trial. An ANOVA for repeated measures shows significant within subject effect for noise and for intensity. The 70 dB SPL noise level shows greater difference scores and a steeper loudness matching function slope than the 50 dB SPL noise level. The greater difference scores and steeper slope are expected due to the higher hearing threshold created with the higher noise level. As the intensity level increases, the difference score decreases. The decrease in difference scores with increasing intensity levels shows the presence of loudness recruitment. The results of this study suggest the use of masking noise in order to measure recruitment is an acceptable simulation. Age alone does not account for changes in loudness recruitment. Therefore, recruitment measurement with noise masking may be a potential marker of early auditory dysfunction.

Human hearing is to collect information from the outside world and is one of the basic human senses. Part of this thesis is devoted to acoustics, properties of the human ear in terms of perception of sounds and methods, which human ears are investigating. Audiometer is an instrument which is most often used in healthcare. The main content of this thesis is to design pure tone audiometer, which is important for the subjective tests of human hearing non-invasive method.

Evoked potentials are electric brain response to external stimulus. They are important diagnostic no visual method in neurology. For their excitation use of different of kinds stimulation, most often: visual, auditory, somatosenzory, olfactory and gustatory. Evoked potentials are objective method for measurement sense perception. This master’s thesis is specialized to auditory evoked potentials and design acoustic generator for their stimulation. Auditory evoked potentials are primary used for objective audiometry, but they have another usage. In the first place, application is specialized on health sector. The aim of this master’s thesis is compact specified medical requirements with available technical resources.