Analysis of Acoustic Psychology of City Traffic and Nature Sounds

In modern society, most people of the world are densely populated in cities so that the traffic sound has a very significant meaning. people tend to classify traffic sound as a noise pollution while they are likely to categorize most nature sound as positive. In this paper, we applied various forms of FFT filters into white noise belonged in nature sound to find frequency characteristics of white noise which preferred by people and confirm its correlation with nature sound. In addition, we conducted an analysis through the comparison of various traffic and nature sound waveforms and spectra. As a result of analysis, the traffic sound have characteristics which sound energy had concentrated on specific frequency bandwidth and point of time compared to nature sound. And we confirmed the fact that these characteristics had negative elements to which could affect to people. Lastly, by letting the subjects listen directly to both traffic and nature sound through brainwave experiment using electrode, the study measured the energy distribution of alpha waves and beta waves. As a result of experiments, it has been noted that urban sound created a noticeably larger amount of beta waves than nature sound; on the contrary, nature sound generated positive alpha waves. These results could directly confirm the negative effects of traffic sound and the positive effects of nature sound.