National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Japan

Published purpose

The first step of this project focuses on comfortable living acoustical environmentsfor increasing elderly populations. Acoustic problems in residentil homes is caused by structural sounds,outdoor noises and equipment in homes. THis team has the expertise to study floor impact sound. The current floor impact sound insulation rating scheme in Japan (grading curve method) is known as single frequency band dominative. Also, the correlation between the concrete and wooden buildings has not yet been studied. Hence, further study on the test and rating protocols of the floor impact sound is necessary. As a first step, the project focuses elderly persons. In addition, the project use the Virtual Reality (VR) microphone using Ambisonics technology to overcome the difficulty on the measurement of the sound pressure levels in the room with multi-modal effect on annoyance . Human Informatics Research Institute (HIRI) of National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) and the Building Research Institute (BRI) will collaborate to perform subjective studies to correlate annoyance from impact noise in wooden houses with the existing and proposed metrics. Floor impact measurements will be conducted at BRI with test facilities such as the test house at BRI with support from AIST. HIRI will perform listening tests with various impact noises at BRI. Older generation participants will be recruited for the listening tests. The results of the listening tests are expected to reveal acoustic properties related to annoyance in the noises and create an evaluation framework of sound quality of residential houses.