Standards Development

Scope

This standard describes the procedures assessing noise annoyance through listening tests, the methods establishing prediction models of perceived annoyance, psychoacoustic annoyance and their conversion model.

The scope of this standard is restricted to the assessment and prediction of annoyance from outdoor environmental noise. The assessment and prediction of annoyance from other noise, such as indoor environmental noise affected by outdoorenvironmental noise can refer to this document.

Purpose

Noise annoyance is people’s direct perception for noise. Noise annoyance is an important basis for determining the acceptability of environmental noise exposure and formulating environmental noise standards. Noise annoyance can be determined through socio-acoustic surveys or listening tests in laboratory. For the socio-acoustic survey of noise annoyance, ISO has correspondingly issued a technical specification, ISO/TS 15666:2021, named “Acoustics—Assessment of noise annoyance by means of social and socio-acoustics surveys”. However, no standard for evaluating annoyance through listening tests has been released yet. With regard to the listening tests of noise annoyance in laboratory, different researchers may use different methods (such as playback of sound samples, questionnaire design, quantification of annoyance, data processing, etc.). Especially, there is usually a lack of reference sound samples in experimental sample groups. The participants (subjects) in listening tests usually give evaluation results according to the relative annoyance degree of sound samples in each experimental sample group. Due to the absence of calibration for individual annoyance data, the comparability of annoyance evaluation results between different experimental sample groups is poor. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a unified standard for the laboratory evaluation method of noise annoyance.

In order to meet the statistical requirements, a large number of respondents need to be surveyed or a large number of subjects need to be recruited in the process of determining the noise annoyance degree through social-acoustic surveys or listening tests in laboratory. The invested manpower, material resources and time costs are large. The annoyance degree of sound samples can be predicted by noise annoyance prediction models classified as perceived annoyance models and psychoacoustic annoyance models. The range of annoyance degree in two kinds of models above are different and can not be compared directly. In general, the perceived annoyance model for different types of noise is developed separately and is only applicable to a specified noise type. However, the psychoacoustic annoyance model has a certain generality for different types of noise. The psychoacoustic annoyance of noise samples can be determined directly by calculation. In order to facilitate the rapid determination of perceived annoyance according to psychoacoustic annoyance, it is important for different types of noise to establish a conversion model between perceived annoyance and psychoacoustic annoyance. Therefore, it is also necessary to develop a unified standard for noise annoyance prediction models and their establishment methods.

In China, a recommended national standard named Acoustics — Procedures for assessment and prediction of noise annoyance (GB/T 42473-2023) was published and implemented in 2023.