Influence of session length on judged annoyance

A laboratory study on the influence of the duration of a listening session on judged annoyance has been performed. Subjects listened under simulated living room conditions to traffic noise and synthetic gunfire noise in sessions lasting either 1, 5, 15 or 30 minutes. Seventy-two subjects participated in the investigation, which was part of a joint CEC project on annoyance due to impulsive noise. The results show that session length does not have a significant effect on judged annoyance. A session length of 5 minutes duration (which has been used previously in many laboratory experiments) is therefore sufficient to obtain a reliable evaluation of judged annoyance.