Continuous evaluation of noise uncomfort in a bus

A binaural recording, realized inside an autobus running according to a typical urban sequence, has been used in several ways : first of all, listeners had to continuously assess the annoyance of the using the categorical continuous method, introduced by Weber for the assessment of loudness. It has been proved that this task is achievable by listeners, even if it is a difficult one. This evaluation has allowed to identify the events inducing annoyance; then, sound extracts representing these annoying events have been numerically modified and assessed by a pair comparison method so as to identify the optimal modification for each of them; lastly, the whole signal has been modified in accordance with the results of the previous step. Then, other listeners had to assess both original and modified signals in a continuous and global way. This part has shown that the assessment has undoubtedly concerned the annoyance issue and not the sound level one, because individual differences have appeared among the members of the jury. It thus seems possible to use this continuous assessment method so that the temporal hedonic evaluation of a long sequence can be obtained and that the most annoying events can be identified.