Annoyance Evaluation of Floor Impact Sounds with Temporal and Spatial Variation in VR Environments

Floor impact sound was evaluated in different reverberation environments with respect to the temporal energy change for heavy-weight floor impact sounds in apartment buildings. In order to reproduce a real moving sound source, a head-related transfer function and head rotation were applied to a impact ball sound. The annoyance response was evaluated in the virtual reality (VR) environment with a head-mounted display using the energy decay curve, decay rate, and overlapped energy due to reverberation. The results show that the recognition of the impact sound by the energy changes in the VR environment, and the reverberant energy significantly contributes to the annoyance response.