It is common knowledge that noise is bad for our quality of life and health. It is, however, less clear what exactly about noise is disturbing and makes people and – most importantly – how to effectively protect against noise. HFC has been working on a research project together with the TU Berlin on behalf of the Federal Highway Research Institute (BASt). The project "Testing psychoacoustic parameters for innovative noise reduction strategies" (FE 02.0431/2019/IRB) aimed to explore innovative measures to reduce road traffic noise and has now been successfully completed.

Some of the results were presented at this year's Annual Conference for Acoustics DAGA 2024 in Hanover and can now be found in the accompanying conference proceedings. One of our articles deals with a new psychological survey instrument that, for the first time, enables a qualitative assessment of road traffic noise and thus paves the way for the development of new noise abatement measures Download PDF. The second article demonstrates the potential of the new instrument in an initial application Download PDF. Enjoy reading!