On the loudness of road traffic noise of longer duration (20 min.) in relation to instantaneous judgment

Abstract

The relation between instantaneous loudness and overall loudness of 20-min road traffic noise was studied. Instantaneous loudness was obtained by the method of continuous judgment by category, which we have developed for this purpose. The results are as follows: (1) Instantaneous loudness was highly correlated with the sound level (dBA) at each moment. (2) Overall loudness showed high correlation with Leq. (3) The average of instantaneous judgment was smaller than overall loudness. This fact suggests that we are apt to ignore the parts of lower level when we judge overall loudness. The average of instantaneous judgment to 30 dB down duration from the peak level was found to agree with overall loudness.