Sound pollution is an ever growing problem in modern society, and especially in urban environments. In this paper, we investigate if and how artificial sounds can improve the experience of visitors of an urban park with a lot of traffic noise. By using a mobile app, park visitors can control the sound playback by selecting the natural sounds they like, such as birds or a waterfall, and setting the volume. This process of adding artificial sounds to the existing sound environment results in an augmented soundscape. Comparison of the environment with and without this sound playback showed that most visitors experience this as an improvement of the park environment and enjoy controlling the sounds. An experiment with 165 users identified various correlations between the visitors’ subjective evaluations of the sound environment and objective measures of their usage behavior with the app, such as the number of interactions and the spent time.

中文翻译：

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通过让游客控制公园的音景来增强公园体验

在现代社会，尤其是在城市环境中，声音污染是一个日益严重的问题。在本文中，我们研究了人工声音是否以及如何改善交通噪音很大的城市公园游客的体验。通过使用移动应用程序，公园游客可以通过选择他们喜欢的自然声音（例如鸟类或瀑布）并设置音量来控制声音播放。这种将人工声音添加到现有声音环境的过程会产生增强的音景。比较有和没有这种声音播放的环境表明，大多数游客认为这是对公园环境的改善，并喜欢控制声音。