Penalty for impulse noise, derived from annoyance ratings for impulse and road-traffic sounds

In the laboratory, four groups of 16 subjects rated the annoyance caused by three types of impulse sounds (regular and irregular gunfire noise and metal-construction noise) and by road-traffic sounds, all presented in background noise. The subjects were presented with the sounds for 5-min periods. The annoyance ratings were related to the A-weighted equivalent level (Leq) of the sounds. From these annoyance ratings a correction term or penalty was derived, which, added to the Leq of the impulse sounds, gives the level of equally annoying traffic noise. The correction was determined for conditions in which (1) only the annoyance caused by specific sources, or (2) the annoyance caused by the total sound (specific source plus background) had to be rated. In addition, the indoor Leq of the constantly present background noise was 35 or 55 dB(A) by and large, the results showed that for lower levels of the sounds an impulse-noise correction of at least 10 dB was required, whereas for higher levels the derived correction was about equal to the ISO/R 1996 penalty of 5 dB. This conclusion, based on the relation between Leq and annoyance ratings, is consistent with the correction based on Leq and the percentage of subjects who reported to be "very much annoyed." For equivalent levels of the impulse sounds at which 33% of the subjects claimed to be very much annoyed, the correction was 10 dB for the conditions in which the indoor Leq of the background noise was 35 dB(A), and 5 dB when this Leq was 55 dB(A).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)     

Hearing loss from simulated work-week exposure to impulse noise.

Six monaural chinchillas were exposed to a repetitive, reverberant, impulse noise for a total of five days, 8 h per day. The average peak overpressure within the holding cage was 113 dB. The reverberation time (pressure fluctuation envelope within 20 dB of peak) was 160 ms. Auditory thresholds were measured at 0.25, 0.5, 1, 2, 4, and 8 kHz before and after each day's exposure using either the average-evoked response technique or shock avoidance conditioning. After the last exposure, recovery was monitored for five successive days. Final thresholds were obtained starting at 30 days postexposure after which the animals were sacrificed for cochlear histology. The high frequencies (4, 8 kHz) showed a daily median shift of 40 dB and a 27 dB recovery before the following day's exposure. The low frequencies (0.25, 0.5 kHz) were shifted 35 dB after each day's exposure with a 15 dB recovery overnight. Final median audiograms showed little permanent threshold shift. The cochleagrams for two test animals were found to be normal while the remaining four displayed 10%--40% losses in hair cells at specific cochlear sites.     

Time-distribution of impulse noise in an enclosure

Impulse noise is an important cause of hearing impairment. When isolated impulses occur a “pressure” damage risk criterion can be used to estimate the resulting hearing impairment. When these isolated impulses occur in a reverberant environment it is currently thought necessary to use an “energy” criterion. A theory is presented in which the percentile sound levels in a room are given as a function of reverberation time and the time between impulses. This theory may enable “pressure” damage risk criteria to be applied to situations where isolated pulses occur in an enclosure.     

Cubic distortion product otoacoustic emissions in young and aged chinchillas exposed to low-frequency noise.

The aim of this study was to examine susceptibility to noise-induced hearing loss in animals with and without age-related hearing loss (AHL), using cubic distortion product otoacoustic emissions (CDPs) to assess the functional status of the outer hair cell (OHC) system. Subjects were young (< or = 3-yr-old) and aged (10- to 15-yr-old) chinchillas. CDP thresholds and input/output (I/O) functions were measured before and after exposure to 95 dB or 106 dB SPL low-frequency noise. The results indicate that (a) aging in the chinchilla is associated with significant elevations of CDP thresholds and depression of CDP I/O functions, (b) noise exposures cause equivalent CDP threshold elevations and amplitude reductions in young animals with normal hearing and older animals with AHL, and (c) CDP threshold and amplitude measures provide information that complements evoked potentials measured from the auditory midbrain.     

A distribution based definition of impulse noise

Determining when a worksite exposure should be considered impulsive is a problem which has complicated both research into mechanisms of auditory pathology and protection of the exposed worker. An ideal solution requires that a definition of impulsive noise be developed which is independent of specific characteristics such as duration and amplitude. As an alternative to duration independence, a fixed time window over which a statistic is calculated may also serve as a basis for classification. Additionally, selecting this window on the basis of TTS production in the ear provides a biological basis for the definition of impulsiveness. Classification of impulsiveness based on the sample kurtosis meets the requirements of a generally applicable impulse definition.     

Threshold recovery functions following impulse noise trauma

An analysis of the pure-tone threshold recovery functions obtained from 118 chinchillas exposed to high-level impulse noise showed that there are at least three distinctly different types of recovery function: type I--a recovery function for which the initial threshold shift recovers monotonically with increasing postexposure time; type II--a delayed recovery; i.e., for a period as long as 6 h following removal from noise, the pure-tone threshold remains elevated and stable before thresholds begin to follow a monotonic course of recovery; and type III--the growth function; i.e., over a period of at least 6 h following removal from the noise, pure-tone thresholds continue to get worse before they begin to follow a monotonic course of recovery. There is more permanent threshold shift (PTS), more sensory cell loss, and predictions of PTS and cell loss based upon initial measures of threshold shift are less accurate at those frequencies characterized by a type III recovery process than at those frequencies characterized by a type I recovery process.     

A new method for removing impulse noise based on noise space characteristic

This paper proposes a new method for eliminating impulse noise. Based on the space characteristic of object and noise, three kinds of basic noise patterns are introduced to describe noise and detect noise candidates. Correspondingly, noise removal operators are presented to remove the impulse noise. Extensive experiment results have shown that the proposed method is better than some of the state-of-the-art methods.     

非局部变分修复法去除高密度椒盐噪声

分析了中值滤波及其改进型算法在处理高密度椒盐噪声时效果不理想的原因,采用变分修复方法来去除高密度椒盐噪声,基于现有的全变差修复模型提出了非局部全变差修复模型。该模型利用椒盐噪声特点(均匀分布、灰度值为0或255),将噪声点看成是图像中遗失或是破损的点,首先在图像中寻找与噪声点邻域相似的区域,将相似区域的中心像素作为噪声点新的邻域然后对其插值,把图像降噪问题转化为图像修复问题,从而达到去除高密度噪声的目的。实验结果表明:该模型对噪声密度为90%的彩色和灰度图像去噪后,其峰值信噪比为22.85和28.77,在客观评价标准方面优于中值滤波及其改进型算法。该模型能有效去除高密度下的椒盐噪声并较好地恢复图像细节,为图像去除高密度噪声提供了一种新的途径。     

Decision-based adaptive morphological filter for fixed-value impulse noise removal

A novel adaptive switching morphological filter for removing fixed-value impulse noise is proposed. The proposed filter firstly identifies noise pixels using the two-stage morphological noise detector, in which the initial noise detection is used to identify the noise candidates based on the morphological gradients and the refined noise detection based on the combined conditional morphological operators is adopted to further classify the noise candidates as the noise pixels or noise-free pixels. Then the detected noise pixels are removed by the adaptive morphological filter using the conditional rank-order morphological operators while the noise-free pixels are left unaltered. Extensive simulations show that the proposed filter outperforms a number of existing switching-based filters because of its excellent performance in terms of noise detection and image restoration.     

Effects of environmental noise on computer-derived voice estimates from female speakers

The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of noise on voice profile statistics from female samples. Six young adult females served as subjects. Five had normal voices; one had a pathological voice with accompanying bilateral vocal nodules. Each female subject was required to match a generated 235 Hz tone (+/- 2 Hz) while maintaining a constant output level of 70 dB SPL (+/- 5 dB). Data collected from a previous study involving a normal male subject were included for comparative purposes. Noise was generated from a personal computer fan which had a strong center frequency component at 235 Hz. Six different A-weighted signal-to-noise [S/N(A)] conditions were created, ranging in 5 dB increments from 25 to 0 dB. Results revealed that fundamental frequency was reasonably resistant to the effects of noise and to the effects of the noisy (pathological) voice signal. Jitter and shimmer estimates generally increased as noise floors elevated. The greatest amount of measurement error was found for the pathological female voice when captured in the presence of environmental noise. Findings are discussed relative to clinical issues surrounding measurement error.     

Speech production in noise with and without hearing protection

People working in noisy environments often complain of difficulty communicating when they wear hearing protection. It was hypothesized that part of the workers' communication difficulties stem from changes in speech production that occur when hearing protectors are worn. To address this possibility, overall and one-third-octave-band SPL measurements were obtained for 16 men and 16 women as they produced connected speech while wearing foam, flange, or no earplugs (open ears) in quiet and in pink noise at 60, 70, 80, 90, and 100 dB SPL. The attenuation and the occlusion effect produced by the earplugs were measured. The Speech Intelligibility Index (SII) was also calculated for each condition. The talkers produced lower overall speech levels, speech-to-noise ratios, and SII values, and less high-frequency speech energy, when they wore earplugs compared with the open-ear condition. Small differences in the speech measures between the talkers wearing foam and flange earplugs were observed. Overall, the results of the study indicate that talkers wearing earplugs (and consequently their listeners) are at a disadvantage when communicating in noise.     

Evaluation of impulse noise criteria using human volunteer data.

Four impulse noise auditory injury criteria adopted by NATO countries, namely, the MIL-STD-1474D (USA), Pfander (Germany), Smoorenburg (Netherlands), and L(Aeq8) (France), are evaluated against human volunteer data. Data from subjects wearing single-hearing protection exposed to increasing blast overpressure effects were obtained from tests sponsored by the US Army Medical Research and Material Command. Using logistic regression, the four criteria were each correlated with the test data. The analysis shows that all four criteria are overly conservative by 9.6-21.2 dB for the subjects as tested. The MIL-STD-1474D for single-hearing protection is 9.6 dB lower than the observed injury threshold for 95% protection with 95% confidence for this particular group of subjects as tested. Similar conclusions can be drawn for the other three criteria.     

The importance of "temporal pattern" in traumatic impulse noise exposures

The equal energy hypothesis (EEH) was evaluated for impulse noise. Specifically, the experiments evaluated the importance of the temporal distribution of impulses; the trading relation between the number of impulses and peak level and the difference between continuous and impulse noise. Monaural chinchillas were exposed to one of seven conditions. Their hearing was evaluated before, immediately after, and 30 days after the exposure. Hair cell damage was reported in the form of a cochleogram. The experiments show that the EEH is more appropriate for low-level impulse (135-dB peak); for equal amounts of energy, 150-dB impulses produce more hearing loss and hair cell damage than 135-dB impulses; for equal amounts of energy, impulses presented in rapid bursts cause less damage than impulses presented at "1/s" and 50 microseconds. Pairs of impulses presented at "1/s" produce the largest amount of damage. The results are discussed in terms of implications for the EEH.     

Expansion-chamber muffler for impulse noise of pneumatic frictional clutch and brake in mechanical presses

A compound expansion-chamber muffler, which consists of a sound absorbing chamber and a switch valve, the chamber integrating structural features of impedance muffler and micropunch plate muffler, is proposed to diminish impulse exhaust noise of pneumatic friction clutch and pneumatic friction brake (PFC/B) in mechanical presses. The structure decreases the impulse exhaust noise of PFC/B over 30 dB(A). A one-dimensional flow model is applied to study the aerodynamic characteristics of compound exhaust process of the single acting cylinder and muffler because the exhaust time is a critical factor for application of muffler in PFC/B. The volume of sound absorbing chamber is found to be an important design parameter to minimize the exhaust resistance of pneumatic cylinder. Experiments are also conducted to validate analytical results. Then the effects of diameter of exhaust ducts and volume of muffler on the exhaust time are discussed in detail. The proposed one-dimensional computational method, which considers the coupling of air-flow field and sound field, gives satisfactory results for the preliminary design of an expansion-chamber muffler. This method has been applied to an existing model HKM3-40MN to reduce its impulse noise.