An on-demand simultaneous annoyance and indoor noise recording technique

Abstract

A novel methodology is presented for the simultaneous measurement of noise and personal annoyance at the exact times that the affected person is annoyed. The system is described and applied to a test case, a farmhouse close to a wind farm where the resident claims to be annoyed by noise. The system was successfully able to characterise the level and spectral content of the noise in the house when the resident was annoyed, and there was some correlation with personally recorded annoyance level. As the system cannot identify noise sources, no conclusions can be made about noise source; however, the methodology is shown to be a useful aid for diagnosing the type and severity of an indoor noise problem. To help interpret the results from this type of testing, a discussion concerning the subjective nature of noise annoyance is presented before some suggestions are made for further improvements in the measurement system.