On Sun, Feb 07, 2021 at 12:36:26PM +0100, Leonardo Gabrielli wrote: > indeed it is related to localizing an emergency > siren in a car.
Fascinating. About 10 years ago I gave a lecture at the AES at Dolby Labs in London in this topic, It was titled "Iatrogenic Sound - why sirens are killing people". Long story short - the classic 'New York Wailer' that has infested cities around the world is the leading exemplar of bad sound design, based on bad science, bad policy, bad laws and corrupt industrial relations. Apart from being seemingly impossible for humans to localise from within a vehicle they provoke the greatest stress and confusion. Emergency vehicle drivers hate it. Pedestrians hate it. Residents hate it. The sound was never "designed" so much as being a historical default inherited from the cultural signature of mechanical air sirens. Because car manufactureres build "luxury" vehicles with high sound isolation, siren SPL levels have increased dangerously. A noise war on our streets has been damaging hearing and causing huge economic loss for decades (See Julian Treasure's book on the deleterious impact of urban sound). Noise pollution is thought to contribute about 8,000 deaths per year in Europe due to adverse cardio-vascular effects. Partly the problem is due to ignorance of acoustics and psychoacoustics at the city planning level. Concepts like attention, awareness, annoyance, legibility and so on are conflated, leading to bad decision making. I really welcome your research. Once you figure out that, in a real urban environment with large scale acoustic effects, wailer sirens are the worst possible choice, I hope you then take a look at what sounds might actually work (hint: short cluster bursts (that invoke attention by inter-band dissonance without invoking annoyance) that can be made directional) (Sadly the AES do not not seem to have my talk in the archives - after several people told me it was "a bit controversial" (there is a great deal of money invested in keeping our streets filled with noise pollution) :) best, Andy Farnell
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