Effects of Sound Source Visibility on Sound Perception in Living Room Environment

Due to urban sprawl and rural urbanization, an increasing number of dwellings and offices are subjected to high levels of traffic noise, which might disturb people's daily life and activities, ultimately leading to noise annoyance. Although the relation between sound exposure and noise annoyance has been investigated thoroughly during the last decades, the influence of visual factors on sound perception is not completely understood. In this paper, the effects of sound source visibility on sound perception in living room environment are studied. For this purpose, 4 window-sight video sceneries, which contain a mixture of different nature and man-made landscape elements are combined with different sound levels and presented to the participants in the experiment in a mockup living room using a surround system and a large television screen. To explore individual differences in attention focusing, a series of scenarios, in which either the audio or visual parts of the videos are subtly altered are used. Results of the experiment are used to investigate the mechanisms explaining the influence of sound source visibility on audiovisual perception.