Exploring the roles of artificial intelligence and next-generation virtual technologies in soundscape studies

Soundscape is an acoustic environment experienced and/or perceived by people, in context. As soundscape is a dynamic environment that each person experiences and perceives it differently, we witnessed a surge of research studies using virtual reality technologies to expose people to different soundscape designs for visualization and auralization. These studies help us understand how people may experience, perceive, and characterize sonic environment differently in the same context or different contexts. As the representations of soundscape are numerous, artificial intelligence and machine learning can be utilized to learn and optimize soundscape characteristics for making a better environmental design. This paper reviews and discusses the roles of virtual reality technologies and artificial intelligence in soundscape studies and designs.