Current approaches to planning (with) sound.

While sound plays a critical role in our experience of the built environment, professionals feel ill-equipped to design and plan with sound in mind. Through a document analysis for 22 planning projects from Quebec, we aim to better understand how sound considerations are integrated into planning in practice. We identify and characterize the observed strategies and propose a typology of sound approaches in planning along two axes related to 1) the integration of the project into the pre-existing sound environment (from continuity to disruption) and 2) the nature and extent of sound considerations (from minimal to composite). This mapping revealed four main approaches to planning with sound, namely insufficient, sufficient, necessary, and extensive. The analysis further highlights a disconnect between planning and sound considerations, partly related to the abstract nature of planning considerations that exert an inherent but rarely acknowledged influence on sound. This disconnect is clearly visible at a tipping point between (flexible but vague) planning considerations and (concrete but technical) sound considerations when projects tend toward a more difficult integration into the pre-existing environment. We conclude with suggestions on how to move toward composite approaches to better integrate sound into planning.

Assessing the ecological validity of soundscape reproduction in different laboratory settings.

The ever-growing body of soundscape research includes studies conducted both in everyday life environments and in laboratory settings. Yet, laboratory settings differ from in-situ and therefore may elicit different perceptions. The present study explores the ecological validity of soundscape reproduction in the laboratory using first-order Ambisonics and of different modes of questionnaire administration. Furthermore, it investigates the influence of the contextual factors of time of day, day of the week, and location on site on soundscape evaluations in situ and in the laboratory, based on the Swedish Soundscape Quality Protocol. We first tested measurement invariance between the computer-based and pen-and-paper administration of the soundscape questionnaire. We then investigated the influence of the above-mentioned contextual factors on soundscape evaluations, as well as the effect of stimuli selection in the laboratory. The analyses confirmed the underlying dimensions of proposed soundscape assessment questionnaires, confirmed metric invariance between computer and pen-and-paper, and revealed significant influences of time, day, and location on soundscape scales. This research represents a critical step in rigorously assessing soundscape evaluations in the laboratory and establishes solid evidence for the use of both in situ and laboratory soundscape studies.

Auditory motion perception emerges from successive sound localizations integrated over time.

Humans rely on auditory information to estimate the path of moving sound sources. But unlike in vision, the existence of motion-sensitive mechanisms in audition is still open to debate. Psychophysical studies indicate that auditory motion perception emerges from successive localization, but existing models fail to predict experimental results. However, these models do not account for any temporal integration. We propose a new model tracking motion using successive localization snapshots but integrated over time. This model is derived from psychophysical experiments on the upper limit for circular auditory motion perception (UL), defined as the speed above which humans no longer identify the direction of sounds spinning around them. Our model predicts ULs measured with different stimuli using solely static localization cues. The temporal integration blurs these localization cues rendering them unreliable at high speeds, which results in the UL. Our findings indicate that auditory motion perception does not require motion-sensitive mechanisms.

Soundtracking the Public Space: Outcomes of the Musikiosk Soundscape Intervention.

Decades of research support the idea that striving for lower sound levels is the cornerstone of protecting urban public health. Growing insight on urban soundscapes, however, highlights a more complex role of sound in public spaces, mediated by context, and the potential of soundscape interventions to contribute to the urban experience. We discuss Musikiosk, an unsupervised installation allowing users to play audio content from their own devices over publicly provided speakers. Deployed in the gazebo of a pocket park in Montreal (Parc du Portugal), in the summer of 2015, its effects over the quality of the public urban experience of park users were researched using a mixed methods approach, combining questionnaires, interviews, behavioral observations, and acoustic monitoring, as well as public outreach activities. An integrated analysis of results revealed positive outcomes both at the individual level (in terms of soundscape evaluations and mood benefits) and at the social level (in terms of increased interaction and lingering behaviors). The park was perceived as more pleasant and convivial for both users and non-users, and the perceived soundscape calmness and appropriateness were not affected. Musikiosk animated an underused section of the park without displacing existing users while promoting increased interaction and sharing, particularly of music. It also led to a strategy for interacting with both residents and city decision-makers on matters related to urban sound.