High annoyance urban noise masking

Urban noise pollution is a growing concern worldwide as a cost of rapid economic growth and development. It affects and harms the human activity and health which brings serious annoyance to daily life. Noise masking technology is one of the efficient solutions to reduce the noise-induced annoyance. For this purpose, we conduct a subjective listening test to examine the masking capability of different masker sounds for different types of noise in Singapore. Acoustical characteristics of these maskers are studies with regarding to their performance based on subjective listening test. The results show that, for high sound pressure level noise, water sound may not be the dominant preferred masker for different urban noises.