Theoretical and empirical research has consistently highlighted the significance of context in understanding and evaluating soundscapes. Despite this, the concept of “context” in soundscape studies remains ambiguously defined, and the indicators employed in these studies are often inconsistent. Consequently, a systematic understanding of the soundscape-context relationship is needed. A systematic literature search, incorporating 14 theoretical and 52 empirical studies, was conducted to develop a framework explaining this relationship. The review explores the origins and evolution of soundscape-context theory, defining context as all non-acoustic components within the spatiotemporal scene of the soundscape experience, categorised into spatial-physical and socio-cultural attributes. Context indicators were summarised: spatial-physical attributes are measured across three scales: macroscale (landscape spatial patterns), mesoscale (particularly landscape elements), and microscale (multisensory factors). Socio-cultural attributes present challenges in establishing universal indicators and are typically described qualitatively or included as individual background factors. Importantly, the review synthesises the dynamic and reciprocal nature of this relationship: context shapes acoustic events and influences perceptual outcomes, while soundscape experiences, in turn, can modify the context. This review clarifies the impact of context in soundscape studies and proposes this framework to promote a standardised paradigm that systematically integrates these diverse contextual factors into soundscape research and practice.

This paper aims to examine sound fields in extra-large spaces, which are defined in this paper as spaces used by people, with a volume approximately larger than 125,000 m(3) and absorption coefficient less than 0.7. In such spaces inhomogeneous reverberant energy caused by uneven early reflections with increasing volume has a significant effect on sound fields. Measurements were conducted in four spaces to examine the attenuation of the total and reverberant energy with increasing source-receiver distance, which was then validated by the simulations with image-source method. Results show that the reasons for the total energy's exponential decrease are not only the direct sound, but also the reverberant energy. The prediction difference of total sound pressure level (SPL) between classical formula and the image-source method increases with the volume and decreases with the surface absorption, based on which a critical line separating extra-large spaces from large ones is proposed. Moreover, a newly modified model based on the importance of first reflection from floor is proposed, showing more advantages of sound level prediction in extra-large spaces.

Soundscape perceptual models were developed in various contexts. However, as the outdoor public space in high-rise residential communities differs in terms of space planning and management, the soundscape perceptual characteristics are still unclear. In this study, an on-site survey was conducted to obtain the perceptual dimensions of soundscape in outdoor public spaces in urban high-rise residential communities based on evaluations of residents. Meantime, the soundscape of the space in different community layouts were compared. It was found that: (1) Four dimensions of outdoor soundscape in high-rise communities were extracted, namely Relaxation, Communication, Quietness, and Spatiality. The first three dimensions were positively correlated with overall soundscape satisfaction significantly. (2) Relaxation was mostly correlated with dominance of noise; Communication and Quietness were primarily related to sounds from human beings. (3) Lower traffic noise and higher levels of human sounds were perceived in enclosed communities, resulting in higher Relaxation and lower Quietness scores in outdoor public spaces in enclosed communities than non-enclosed ones. These findings evoke insights into the understanding of soundscape assessment in different contexts, and provide implications for sound environment design in urban high-rise communities.

The present study focuses on the impact of exterior traffic noises on sound environment evaluation in office spaces, considering their interaction with interior noises. There were three interior noise conditions: silence, air-conditioner noise, and irrelevant speech noise. Six exterior traffic noises (road, maglev, tram, metro, conventional inter-city train, and high-speed train) were merged with interior noise clips to create the combined noise stimuli. Forty subjects participated in the experiment to assess the acoustic environment in office spaces exposed to multiple noises. The results showed that both interior and exterior noise significantly affected acoustic comfort and noise disturbance. As for the exterior traffic noise, both the traffic noise source and the noise level were found to be influential on both attributes. More temporally fluctuating traffic noises, such as high-speed train noise, were found to have a greater negative effect on subjective evaluations. Meanwhile, the interior noise source was also found to influence evaluations of the sound environment. Compared to the single traffic noise condition, irrelevant speech noise significantly increased the negative impact of traffic noises, while the air-conditioner noise had a neutral effect. In addition, participants in offices with speech noise were less sensitive to the traffic noise level.

The purpose of this paper is to review the acoustic perception of special-shaped spaces. Peer-reviewed English-language journal articles published between 2003 and 2023 were searched in the Web of Science and Scopus databases by using the keywords “perception”, “acoustics”, “flat space”, “extra-large space”, “coupled space”, “long space”, and spatial function and their synonyms. The inclusion criteria were as follows: (1) Included articles should focus on the field of psychoacoustics. (2) Spaces should be clearly identified as one or more of the four special spaces described above. (3) Subjective evaluation methods for spatial acoustic perception should be used. Finally, a total of 31 studies were included. A standardised data extraction form was used to collect spatial information, subject information, sound environment information, and other information. The results show that comfort expresses positive perception results in all four different spaces, whereas annoyance is negative in both flat and extra-large spaces, and satisfaction shows the opposite results in flat and coupled spaces, whereas perceived reverberation is the specific dimension for coupled space. In addition, unique conclusions were obtained for each type of space and special cases in the spaces were individually characterised.