Assessing sound levels & its quality at eating places

Abstract

Sound is a critical modality of servicescapes. Our senses are intensively stimulated at restaurants. Exceptionally noisy environments in restaurants are likely to be a health hazard for people who work at or regularly frequent eating places. The loudness, sharpness and sound pressure level (in dB) are factors that influences diner’s evaluation of acoustic comfort on sound sources. This project investigates the eating places soundscapes all around the campus of the Nanyang Technological University, which will also emphasize on the sonic environment quality as well as any potential loss of hearing risk in eating places. The data collection includes sound level on-site, audio recordings excerpts from which psychoacoustic indicators such as Sharpness and Loudness were tabulated, perceptual ratings using the British Standards Institution (BSI) Standards Publication of International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 2018 as well as annotations of the physical features such as occupancy and weather. The acoustic environment was evaluated based on the holistic quality of the soundscapes and perceived spatial qualities at the various locations through evaluations from the subjective tests of about 30 participants. In this report, analysis and implications of the evaluations on the selected recorded excerpts for soundscape quality assessment are studied and discussed.