Thank you for collecting data for us in New York! It will help us better understand how experiences in such an environment (lots of noise) is shaped by the sound. Below, you can see some insights into your data and not at least inspect the map you have helped produce ;-)

Sound map

The sound you were exposed to in New York is shown on the map below. You can choose to view “Sound pressure level” “Signal-to-noise ratio”, “Heart rate” (as a percentage of your mean heart rate) or simply see where your group moved and when it happened. If you select “Time,” each dot is colored according to how much time (in hours) has passed since you started.

Sound pressure level (SPL) in Decibels

The sound you are exposed to changes constantly depending on your activity and location. Therefore, it is interesting to inspect a time series of the sound during your trip to Helsingør. This can help you better evaluate if some places had better sound quality than others, and if this corresponded with your own experiences and recollections.

The intensity of the sound is typically measured in sound pressure level (SPL). Below you see the time series of the SPL during your trip.

Instead of inspecting single time series, we can also average them across all teams. This way, patterns will reveal common exposure that you all had - perhaps because you were doing group activities or the like. Below you can see the SPL average across data from each team.

Clearness of the sound (signal-to-noise ratio, SNR) in Decibels

Another dimension of the sound you are exposed to is its clearness, or the ratio between what you want to hear (e.g., speech) and disturbing background noise. This is typically measured as the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), which estimates the difference in decibels (dB) between the target signal and noise. However, in real life, target signals are rarely well-defined—speech from one person can be both a target or noise depending on the listener’s intention. Thus, representing sound clearness using SNR is only a crude estimation of real-world perception.

As hearing aids optimize for speech reception, their estimation of SNR is typically based on the difference between ambient sound that is modulated in frequency and amplitude similar to speech, and unmodulated background noise. This means that the hearing aid will estimate high SNRs if there is a clear speech signal present, but it could also be music or a similar signal that contains modulation similar to speech.

Below, you can see time series of the sound clearness (SNR) you experienced on your trip.

Again, the average time series (shown below) better reflect how your days were different.