Assessment of Acoustic Satisfaction at Metro Stations from an Objective and Subjective Point of View (Case Study: Metro of Tehran and Tabriz)

The provision of sound comfort and speech intelligibility in metro stations also contribute to the mental and physical discussions of individuals in addition to safety and security. In acoustics, an objective evaluation alone is not sufficient to determine acoustic satisfaction and there is a need for subjective evaluation. Therefore, the purpose of this research was evaluation of acoustical satisfaction in metro stations in terms of quantity and quality with descriptive-experimental methods. The required data was collected through field studies that included measurement of physical parameters (SPL and RT) as well as questionnaires to better understand the audience and measure their satisfaction with the five effective components in acoustic quality (auditory, speech, human, functional and architecture) and analyzed in two EXCEL and SPSS software. A comparison with international standards was made in the scope of physical measurements and recognition of the underlying variables to determine the satisfaction, the relationship between the factors influencing the acoustic satisfaction with the demographic variables which research in humanities is looking for. The analysis of the collected data indicated that the SPL and RT did not follow the relevant standards. The main factors of dissatisfaction from people’s points of views included mechanical, dynamic and speech reflection in metro stations, which produce significant noise, and have a great impact on safety and security and the performance of public address systems. Furthermore, satisfaction of users had a significant correlation with variables such as gender, age, number of trips during the day, and auditory ability of each individual.