• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.38 no.6
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• pp.651-660
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• 2019

The present study aims to find out the necessary speech sound level which can satisfy with the speech intelligibility in a noisy classroom environments. For this, auralized materials were made to undertake listening tests with 27 people. Speech intelligibility tests were carried out using both Consonant-Vowel-Consonant (CVC) and Phonetically Balanced Words (PBW) methods. Signal to noise ratio was changed by 5 dB for each test. As a result, it was found that speech intelligibilities are increasing with larger Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR). It was also found that there is a lot of difference of speech intelligibilities by SNR for syllables (CVC) with the Reverberation Time (RT) of 1.5 s. However, any significant difference was not found for words (PBW) in the case with RTs of below 0.8 s. Also, it was revealed through the 2-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) test that SNR is the only attentive factor which can affect the Korean speech intelligibilities for both PBW and CVC methods. Therefore, RTs below 0.8 s could be the acoustic criteria for classroom which can minimize the effects of noise. In the case with RTs larger than 0.8 s, much larger SNR is needed to give sufficient speech intelligibility.

• Journal of Korean Association for Spatial Structures
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• v.7 no.5
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• pp.75-82
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• 2007

The present work measured and analyzed changes in the acoustics of a sound field which has a retractable ceiling. An 1/20 scale model of an openable space was built and measurement was carried out by varying the opened area of a ceiling. The most widely used room acoustic and design parameters, RT, EDT, and D50 were investigated. The results suggest that the use of RT as an acoustic design parameter may not be proper in an openable space and further it is likely to mislead the initial acoustic design of such spaces. It is mainly due to the characteristics of RT in which non-exponential decay processes are linearly fitted. Early decay times were found to be decreased in proportion to increaing the ratio of opened area. D50, an index of speech intelligibility, was effectively shows the influence of openings on the acoustics. It is also found that EDT and D50 at the seats, not directly exposed to the opened part of a ceiling, were almost linearly decreased in proportion to the ratio of opened area, while little influence was found for the opening ratio larger than 40% at the directly exposed seats to the opened part of a ceiling.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.101-106
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• 2011

In case of an emergency such as a fire on a building and there is a need to evacuate the occupant in that building, it is important to have the guidance information effectively delivered to the evacuating occupants to guide them toward a safe direction using audio sensual media. And, it is also very important to prevent the evacuating occupants getting lost or falling astray, away from the direction toward safety. The purpose of this study, in this respect, is to examine the possible application of the precedent sound effect, with which the evacuating occupants may get a sense of the direction where the announcement comes from. With such an effect, an experiment was conducted to measure the extent to which people can hear the preceding and the following sound in terms of the acoustic pressure level changes and delay time changes, with a view to make the optimal evacuation-guidance announcement or sound. The optimal evacuation guidance sound (announcement) per each of the experimental indoors environments were as follows; 1) Regarding the optimal condition for the evacuation guidance announcement sound in the space of a lecture room, the direction of the advanced sound is positively recognized when the follow-up sound has the delaying time of 10 ms~50 ms in comparison with the advanced sound or when there is no difference between the acoustic pressures of the advanced and follow-up sounds or the acoustic pressure of the advanced sound is higher than that of the follow-up sound. 2) Regarding the optimal evacuation guidance announcement sound in the space of a hall, the advanced sound is positively recognized when the follow-up sound has the delaying time of 20 ms~60 ms in comparison with the advanced sound. 3) Regarding the optimal evacuation guidance announcement sound in the space of a gymnasium, the advanced sound is positively recognized when the follow-up sound has the delaying time of 10 ms~40 ms in comparison with the advanced sound or when the sound pressure of the advanced sound has a higher level than or the same level as that of the follow-up sound.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.40 no.6
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• pp.593-606
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• 2021

The present study investigated the sounds at 13 points in the four districts in Cheongju including commercial district, historic district, urban walking district and university campus in order to realize the soundscape of the city. In order to this, questionnaire survey was conducted to 65 citizens and 5 acoustic experts on sites to find both sound loudness and annoyance of each district. At the same time, information about loud, unpleasant, preferred and representative sound of each district were acquired by selecting three from 35 sounds which consist of natural, artificial and machinery sounds. As a result, it was found that there is a very close correlation between sound loudness and annoyance. Through the analysis of sounds at each district, it was revealed that machinery sounds dominate in commercial area as figure sound, It was also shown that artificial and natural sounds dominate in historic area, artificial sounds in both urban area and university campus respectively. Laboratory listening tests were undertaken to 20 people using recorded sounds and video captured on site. The results denote that machinery and artificial sounds are regarded as most loud, machinery sounds as most unpleasant, natural and artificial sounds as most pleasant which shows similar tendency of on-site evaluation.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.287-301
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• 2022

The present study aims to investigate the difference of soundscape evaluation results from on-site field test and laboratory test which are commonly used for soundscape surveys. In order to do this, both field and lab tests were carried out at four different areas in Cheongju city. On-site questionnaire surveys were undertaken to 65 people at 13 points. Laboratory listening tests were carried out to 48 adults using recorded sounds and video. Laboratory tests were undertaken to two different groups who had experience of field survey or not. Also, two different sound reproduction tools, headphones and speakers, were used in laboratory tests. As a result, it was found that there is a very close correlation between sound loudness and annoyance in both field and laboratory tests. However, it was concluded that there must be a difference in recognizing the figure sounds between field and laboratory tests since it is hard to apprehend on-site situation only using visual and aural information provided in laboratory tests. In laboratory tests, it was shown that there is a some difference in perceived most loud figure sounds in two groups using headphones and speakers. Also, it was analyzed that there is a tendency that field experienced people recognize the figure sounds using their experienced memory while non-experienced people can not perceive the figure sounds.