Friday the 13th of May Emma Arvidsson (EA) did her Ph.D. dissertation at Lund’s University (Sweden) under the title ‘Acoustic Design with Regard to Human Perception’. Ordinary Public Rooms From many years of research, we know that ordinary public rooms (classrooms and offices) where complex tasks such as learning or following long chains of thought […]
How children make sense of the complex signals they hear in the classroom depends partly on their hearing and cognitive abilities. But newly published research shows more about the important part played by the acoustic environment in this process; specifically, the role of reverberation time. The ability to make sense of what you are hearing […]
From thunderclaps to crying children: sound waves have a large variety of physical, physiological, and psychological effects on people. These effects, rather than the actual sound wave, affect acoustic comfort. In room-acoustic design, it is often not enough to measure how to achieve the best possible technical parameters. In addition to this, one should always […]
Being an editor on Acoustic Bulletin brings with it a fair bit of research. We often try to be a more accessible source of information on acoustics, but we also know that many of our readers are academics. In this post we test a new format where we recommend high quality studies to our readers. […]
Marcia Jenneth Epstein, Ph.D. has once again contributed to Acoustic Bulletin with this guest blog post. We appreciate your work, Marcia! Read more about our guest blogger and find her other post here. Hearing is our ”second sense”. Phrases used in Western culture to demonstrate understanding – at least in English – are often visual: […]
Last June 24th, Daniel de la Prida defended his PhD thesis [1] at the Technical University of Madrid (Spain). His research focused on the assessment of the subjective perception both in architectural and environmental acoustics. In the following, a summary of Daniel de la Prida’s research (mostly focused on room acoustics) is given. All the […]
In offices, noise control should be a priority as unwanted sound causes stress. Continuously elevated stress levels are a health risk. Turku University of Applied Sciences and University of Turku have conducted the first Finnish medical study on the physiological, psychological, and performance effects of irrelevant speech. Office noise consists primarily of this kind of […]
How we perceive the sounds around us is dependent upon their inherent acoustic characteristics but also their associated meanings, context and our experience. We individuals shape the frame of reference. Exposure to unwanted, negative sounds (noise!) impacts our quality of life. Until now, our primary goal in acoustics has been to solely reduce the negative […]
“The soundscape of the average modern hospital is a cacophony of overlapping beeps, blats and pings from monitors, roaring ventilation systems, raucous bursts of conversation from visitors, patients and the nursing station, carts rumbling down hallways, televisions, phones. Sleep, essential to the healing process, is available primarily through medications. Even medicated sleep can be elusive, […]
The Nordic Acoustic Association and the Norwegian Acoustical Society invited scientists and engineers to attend the Baltic-Nordic Acoustic Meeting for 2021 this week and despite an online set-up the program consisted of keynote lectures, invited and contributed papers in structured parallel sessions. Some of the really interesting presentations are described here but you can find […]