Yes / Tranquillity characterized by a pleasant but calming environment is often to be found in natural environments where man-made noise is at a low level though natural sounds can be relatively high. Numerous studies have shown a link between such restorative environments and hospital recovery rates, stress reduction, longevity, pain relief and even how the brain processes auditory signals. In hospitals and primary care facilities there is a need to improve patient waiting rooms as current designs are largely based solely on medical need. There are often long waits in such spaces and patients are coping with the stress and anxiety caused by their medical condition. Attention should therefore be given to creating ‘‘restorative environment” as a component to their medical treatment. The study describes the effects of introducing natural sounds and large images of natural landscapes into a waiting room in a student health center. Using self reported levels of anxiety and tranquillity it was possible to assess the impact that these targeted auditory and visual interventions had in affecting the quality of the patient experience. Following the changes results show that levels of reported tranquillity were significantly improved but there were smaller change in reported reductions in anxiety.

No / Tranquility has a number of facets. Given the role that tranquility plays in societies, it is increasingly seen as an environmental indicator. Earlier, some have identified tranquility as contributing to health and wellbeing of individuals and the society, making it to be rooted in the context of sound natural ecosystems as a desirable environmental characteristic. Previous studies have identified tranquility places as having links to nature and natural features, wild landscapes, naturally behaving wildlife and natural sounds. The question of how tranquility can be evaluated and the perception of tranquility by visitors is a continuous recurrence. This study therefore selected seven green open spaces in Hong Kong in an attempt to answer these and other questions that are arising. Although results vary, it however provides a perspective on how people perceive tranquil spaces as part of their leisure and recreation indulgence, given rise to the concept of eco-leisure. / Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (RGC/GRF, CUHK449612)

No

The connection with the outdoor acoustic environment created by open windows has so far been one of the main impediments to the adoption of natural ventilation (NV), due to indoor noise levels easily exceeding design requirements. Starting from the apparent conflict between ventilation and acoustic comfort needs, and the potential offered by NV for low-energy cooling and ventilation, the study explores the opportunities for shaping healthy and supportive acoustic environments through sound transmitted via ventilation openings. The research question challenges the traditional approach to acoustic design, which assumes noise annoyance reduction by merely reducing decibel noise levels, drawing inspiration from the soundscape concept. Soundscape science characterises the human response to the acoustic environment in context and can help understand if and how NV may contribute to defining spaces that sound good to their occupants. The aim is to go beyond an exclusive focus on the ‘noise’ – ‘noise annoyance’ binomial, and to employ ‘wanted’ sounds as a design resource for creating acoustically pleasant environments. However, the soundscape framework, as described by ISO 12913 standard series, has been primarily developed for use in the context of urban planning. This has led to question (i) how the soundscape approach can be applied to the indoor built environment, (ii) what factors positively influence it and (iii) how it can be measured in residential buildings. A systematic literature review categorized the factors that positively influence acoustic perception in domestic environments, highlighting its strongly multi-factorial nature. Beyond noise level, a combination of acoustic and non-acoustic factors was found to affect acoustic perception, such as the urban context, house and person-related factors, socio-economic, situational, and environmental factors. The study benefited from a round of interview with experts in the field of urban soundscape, indoor soundscape, acoustic design, and public health and well-being. The collective discussion encompassed the characterization, management, and design of indoor (and indoor versus outdoor) soundscapes to identify current research gaps in the objective and subjective evaluation of the indoor acoustic environments. In response, based on a laboratory listening test, a model of perceived affective quality of indoor acoustic environments has been derived to guide the measurement and improvement of indoor residential soundscapes. During the test, 35 participants were asked to rate 20 different sound scenarios each. Scenarios were defined by combining four indoor sound sources and five urban environments, filtered through a window ajar, on 97 attribute scales. Comfort, content, and familiarity were extracted as the main perceptual dimensions explaining respectively 58%, 25% and 7% of the total variance in subjective ratings. A measurement system was proposed, based on a 2-D space defined by two orthogonal axes, comfort, and content, and two derivative axes, engagement and privacy – control, rotated 45° on the same plane. The model was tested in a large-scale online survey to assess the influences of different acoustic and non-acoustic factors on indoor soundscape dimensions, window-opening behavior, and occupant well-being. Evaluating the affective response to the indoor acoustic environment through the comfort – content model helped identifying the impacts that acoustical factors (e.g., sound typology), building (e.g., house size), urban (e.g., availability of a quiet side), situational (e.g., number of people at home), and person-related factors (e.g., noise sensitivity) determine on building occupants depending on the specific activity people are engaged with at home, reaching a more in-depth knowledge compared to appraisals based on annoyance evaluation alone. By disentangling the positive and negative contributions of sound stimuli according to people’s perception, it was possible to highlight the opportunity provided by NV to create a sense of place and enhance indoor soundscapes, providing useful masking opportunities in the presence of disturbing indoor noise sources. Results pointed to the existence of benefits from NV able to compensate for a reduced acoustic comfort in case of outdoor acoustic pollution. However, the availability of ‘positive’ urban soundscapes is essential for occupants’ well-being, and is linked primarily to access to natural sounds, but also to other commonly available urban sounds. The ‘quieter’ is therefore not always the better, but it really depends on the composition of indoor and outdoor sound types according to people’s preference and on the interaction with different domains (e.g., visual). Such evidence reinforces the role of acoustics in building and urban design, integrated with the other disciplines involved and based on multi-domain research. Overall, the doctoral study contributes to framing the ‘indoor soundscape’ concept, addressing scientific, industrial, social, and environmental implications, and suggesting future lines of research.

Yes / his paper reports the findings of a study that presented bi-modal audio-visual stimuli (video footage), to experimental subjects under controlled conditions, in order to obtain reliable estimates of perceived wildness, naturalness, felt remoteness and tranquillity. The research extends beyond the literature and demonstrates that unlike tranquillity, wildness appears to be a more intellectual or cognitive construct. However, it does relate well to remoteness and naturalness and is reduced by the presence of mechanical noise. By using the approach previously employed for the development of a Tranquillity Rating Prediction Tool (TRAPT), it has been demonstrated that a similar methodology is also appropriate for wildness. WRAPT (Wildness Rating Prediction Tool) is the first attempt to predict wildness from physical variables, the values of which can be readily obtained from field surveys supplemented by detailed maps where large areas require assessment. The findings of this study will be of interest to those responsible for managing and marketing protected areas such as National Parks, practitioners involved in carrying out landscape character assessments, cartographers wishing to incorporate reliable acoustic data within their vector or raster based stacks and landscape architects involved in designing wild and tranquil spaces across a range of scales.

Yes / Tranquil spaces can be found and made in the city and their promotion and use by residents and visitors is an important means of building resilience. Studies have shown that spaces that are rated by visitors as tranquil are more likely to produce higher levels of relaxation and less anxiety that should ultimately result in health and well-being benefits. Such spaces can therefore be classed as restorative environments. Tranquil spaces are characterized by a soundscape dominated by natural sounds and low levels of man-made noise. In addition, the presence of vegetation and wild life has been shown to be an important contributory factor. Levels of rated tranquillity can be reliably predicted using a previously developed model TRAPT and then used to design and identify tranquil spaces, improve existing green spaces and develop Tranquillity Trails to encourage usage. Tranquillity Trails are walking routes that have been designed to enable residents and visitors to reflect and recover from stress while receiving the benefits of healthy exercise. This paper describes Tranquillity Trails designed for three contrasting areas. Predictions of the rated tranquillity have been made along these routes and feedback from users was elicited at one site that confirmed the expected benefits. / Bradford Centre for Sustainable Environments in the Faculty of Engineering and Informatics at the University of Bradford.

The soundscape plays a key, if often overlooked, role in the construction of public urban space. Street music – a conscious deliberate propagation of sound in public space – opens an entryway into comprehending the role of sound in the city, and what it reveals about the city’s inhabitants. Ethnographic fieldwork in Brussels and Stockholm focuses on street musicians of all kinds, exploring how their music is shaped by their personal motivations, how their practices negotiate meaning in sound and in space, and how their rhythms shape, and are shaped by, the city. These explorations give reason to question R. Murray Schafer’s philosophies on soundscape studies, particularly in the urban context. Drawing from Henri Lefebvre’s notions of the production of space, and rhythmanalysis as an analytical tool, the urban soundscape is understood as an ongoing negotiation of individual actions, where dynamics of power, identity, and ideology become audible. Street musicians and their sound cultures feature not just as a topic worthy of study, but also as a guide of how and why to listen to and analyze the rhythms of the city.

The focus of the compositional approach presented in this folio is the sounding environment. The term sounding environment is used in this context to refer to the whole of our living experience in the world which we might register as relating to sound. It might include everything that is sounding, seemingly sounding, imagined sounding, remembered sounding, sensed as sounding, composed to sound. It includes thus the actual sound environment, all that is sensed or interpreted as sound and imaginary sounds. This dissertation accompanies the seven acousmatic and the two sound installation works included in the folio. It is divided into two parts. In the first part relevant ideas and theories both from the literature of electroacoustic music composition and soundscape composition are discussed while in the second the compositional approach to the sounding environment is presented as applied to the works.

Denna uppsats beskriver en av många möjliga sätt att skapa ett soundscape med hjälp av digitala verktyg. Resultatet testas sedan med hjälp av en enkätundersökning för att ta reda på huruvida realistiskt och immersivt arbetet upplevs. Syftet med denna uppsats är att presentera ett tillvägagångssätt för musiker och producenter att skapa soundscapes med hjälp av digitala verktyg. Detta projekt är ett designarbete med en metod framtagen ur boken A Designer's Research Manual. Designarbetet beskrivs under rubriken Skapandet av ett soundscape. Resultatet av detta arbete visar att detta tillvägagångssätt ej upplevs lika realistiskt som andra soundscapes. Detta kan bero på flera olika anledningar som exempelvis de verktyg som använts, den testmetod som använts, författarens egna förmåga som ljuddesigner etc

<p>The expansion of wind energy production creates an increase in wind turbine (WT) noise. The purpose of this paper is to examine if a possible reduction of WT noise might be achieved by adding natural ambient sounds, so called auditory masking. A loudness experiment was conducted to explore this possibility, using four ambient sounds of trees, birds and water as maskers. Sixteen listeners assessed the loudness of WT noise heard alone or in the presence of 40 dB masking sounds, using the method of magnitude estimation. Partial masking of WT noise was found in the presence of all ambient sounds. The masking effect corresponded to a dB-reduction of the WT noise from a few dB for signal-to-noise ratios (S/N) close to 0 dB up to around 10 dB at -15 dB S/N. These results indicate that addition of ambient sounds may be a useful method for masking unwanted noise from wind turbines.</p>