Subjective responses between real impact sound and rubber ball im-pact sound

Owing to the recent COVID-19 pandemic, people spend more time in their homes, and noise abatements between neighbouring units are increasing. Heavy/soft impact sounds are major noise sources in high-storey apartment buildings. Standardized heavy/soft impact sources are known to exhibit the most similar physical and subjective characteristics to real impact sounds such as a child running or jumping, and an adult walking. The single number quantity on a rubber ball has been standardized. Hence, a classification scheme for rubber-ball impact sounds also needs to be standardized. Several studies on subjective responses have been conducted on the rubber-ball impact sound in various situations. In this study, subjective responses on rubber and real impact sounds were compared. The subjective experiment was conducted in the listening chamber, which is furnished similarly to typical living rooms in Korean apartment buildings. In our experiment, the rubber-ball impact sounds recorded in the real apartment building and real impact sound recorded in the mock building were presented via a subwoofer and multi-channel loudspeaker system. Subjective responses were collected with a seven-point SD scale. © INTER-NOISE 2021 .All right reserved.