SOUND DURATION AND ITS EFFECT ON JUDGED ANNOYANCE

If two noises are identical in every respect except that the first is of greater duration than the second, it is expected that the first noise would be judged more annoying than the second. The primary aims of these studies are to test that expectation and to quantify the relationship between duration and judged annoyance. Caution should be exercised in applying the results, since only two spectra, random noise and a fan jet ground run-up, were examined. Depending on the laboratory conditions under which the annoyance judgments were made, the penalty for doubling of duration ranges from 0·6 to 3·1 dB for durations of 1 to 34 seconds. The median penalty was 2·0 dB for doubling of duration. When attempting to quantify the relationship between duration and noise it can be concluded that one should not average across instructions as the two kinds of instructions do not produce similar relationships between duration and annoyance. © 1969.