ARTIFICIAL SOUNDSCAPE GENERATION IN NOISE MASKING APPLICATIONS

The soundscape approach has grown vastly since the pioneering work of Murray Schafer, becoming more and more important as a different perspective from which to assess the annoyance and sound quality in noise polluted areas. Only a few papers are available on the artificial modification of a soundscape (for example, through the placement of new sound sources like water fountains or through the placement of loudspeakers) and even less research has been carried out on intelligent and automatic generation of artificial soundscape. In this paper we will reflect upon our experiences over recent redesign of the soundscapes of noise polluted areas, especially garden and parks, with the aid of an intelligent and interactive audio system that is able to mask the underlying noise, stressing on the musical contents design, content which is composed on purpose for each installation by a team of sound designers. The artificial soundscape generation system comprises innovative sound sources (loudspeakers) able to withstand harsh, outdoor conditions. Those loudspeakers are carefully designed to be aesthetically pleasant and to perfectly complement architectural and natural landscapes. At the heart of the system is a piece of software capable of choosing the proper soundtracks (from a music database of meta-compositions) and to process them in real time to match the features of the noise to be masked.