An experiment on the feeling of separation when multiple aircraft noises are overlapped

In order to calculate the A-weighted single event sound exposure level () of aircraft noise, the following method is described in the manual for aircraft noise measurement in Japan. Firstly a time-section, which is the range between two points where the noise level is 10 dB lower than the maximum noise level (), should be identified, and secondly the energy within the section is integrated. This method can easily be applied to the single event noises. When multiple aircraft noises are overlapped simultaneously, there are cases where cannot be calculated adequately by this method. In such cases, it is required to record the number of aircraft noises in the field measurements. However, even in the case of manned measurement, it is not easy to separate sound sources just by listening to the sound. A pilot study of the psychoacoustic experiment was conducted using the stimuli where multiple aircraft noises were overlapped in order to find what condition is needed so that multiple aircraft noises were separately perceived. It was suggested that a considerable time interval was needed so that people felt the separation between aircraft noises only with auditory information.