PREDICTING ANNOYANCE FROM DETECTABILITY OF LOW-LEVEL SOUNDS

The relationship between the predicted detectability and judged annoyance of 24 low-level sounds heard in three noise backgrounds was investigated by an adaptive paired comparison procedure under free-field listening conditions. The predicted detectability of the set of sounds accounted for almost 90% of the variance in judgments of annoyance made in the most commonplace (falling spectrum) background noise environment. Conventional methods of predicting annoyance did not yield significantly higher correlations than a detectability-based method in two other unusually shaped background noise environments. © 1979, Acoustical Society of America. All rights reserved.