In order to explain human evaluation strategies in complex sound environments, not only the interaction and nature of present individual sounds have to be considered. How an environment is perceived, strongly depends on contextual factors and cognitive processes guiding the listener's focus of attention. The contributions of these various influencing factors to subjective overall assessments have been subject to research for many years. However, no reliable model exists yet, to predict human evaluation of sound quality in an acoustic environment with multiple sound sources. With the aim to investigate the relationships between individual environmental sounds and overall assessments in detail, a series of listening experiments was conducted at Hochschule Düsseldorf – University of Applied Sciences. In the course of soundwalks in the city center of Düsseldorf, the participants experienced and evaluated the sound quality of four different locations (pedestrian zone, square, urban park, traffic road). 360° videos and 3D audio recordings were taken at each location, and were later implemented in a laboratory setting with video screens and a 6-channel loudspeaker setup. The soundwalk participants conducted a second evaluation of the four urban locations in the laboratory setup. In a short concluding interview, they provided a comparison of both test experiences. The ratings from the soundwalks and the laboratory experiment were compared in terms of overall sound evaluation, the number and type of individual sounds mentioned and further non-acoustic factors. To assess the effect of local experience on the sound evaluations, a second group of test persons, who had not participated in the soundwalks before, conducted the laboratory experiment as control group. The judgements of both groups were juxtaposed as well. The results showed remarkable similarity in overall evaluation of the four urban locations, despite of the different experimental conditions.
