Talk:Sound masking

Very copy and pasted - Here are some references that might help you out. Maybe read them over and try to reword some of your phrasing in your own way

Katz, J. (2011) Handbook of Clinical Audiology

Gelfand, S.A. (2007) Essentials of Audiology

Studebaker, G. (1967) Clinical Masking of the Nontest Ear. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, November 1967, Vol. 32, 360-371. doi:10.1044/jshd.3204.360

Ellyn Kuehne (talk) 19:27, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

Commercial Bias ?

The Sound Masking page has some good content but the discussion of plenum and direct field systems has become biased by a contributor with financial interest in direct field systems. A good source for information without a technology bias may be found at:

http://adiacoustics.com/the-reading-room

Workplace ideas (talk) 19:59, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

I concur - much is copied verbatim from docs linked from [Atlas Sound http://www.atlassound.com/Support/MaskingFAQ.aspx]

Probably copy also the missing graph.

Could be CopyVio or Advertising ?

---19S.137.93.171 (talk) 09:22, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

The reverse is true, the Atlas Sound text was copied from the copyrighted works of the author which were written prior to the publication of Atlas document. As Charles Darwin found out, discussing unfamiliar concepts is often claimed to be biased. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.98.83.20 (talk) 15:53, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

The Atlas Sound documents were published with permission from the book "Sound Masking Done Right" by Robert Chanaud, Ph.D. ISBN 978-0-9818166-0-9 and some of the edits to this page were performed by a user identified as BobChan2 which does line up a bit with the name "Robert Chanaud" .

Wikified

Page has been wikified. --Pavithran 18:19, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Skepticism

I'm really having a hard time making sense of this article. I find it hard to believe that noise health effects can be reduced by adding more noise, whether or not you "notice" a noise less. Even where annoyance is concerned, it seems like this assumes one is only annoyed by the observation of the masked noise - but the inability to hear is also a source of annoyance. For example, there is something innately disturbing about concentrating on your work in an area where someone could easily come up behind you without you hearing them, and often subtle sounds help you to know if you're doing something properly. I think that for this article to succeed it will need to address the issue of flat-out disbelief. 70.15.114.89 18:28, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps, but sound masking is a valid means of dealing with annoying noise (such as a loud noise in a narrow range of frequencies) by masking it with noise that has less annoying characteristics. Pzavon 02:21, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

The implication of the author having problems of disbelief in masking as a solution is that masking noise is loud and disruptive in and of itself. In fact, sound masking background noise levels are on the order of 46 dBA, roughly the level associated with a quiet suburban neighborhood during the day (see Cowen, J., "Architectural Acoustics Design Guide," McGraw-Hill, 2000) and significantly lower than many existing working environments. Sound masking for reduction of distractions in quiet open offices is a very well established technique, dating back to the 1960's, for which designs are provided by virtually every acoustic consultant in the US. In the year 2007, the benefits of sound masking in terms of improving the office acoustic environment are simply not questioned and have not been for 40 years. The author owes it to himself to do a little research in both the technical an popular literature. If he does so, his skepticism will be quickly eliminated. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.92.44.177 (talk) 23:42, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

The psychological effects are more subtle than hearing damage. I doubt if all people will find masking helpful - See Tinnitus ! Although Tinnitus masking can be effective, presumably if the symptom isn't white noise or pink noise. Paradoxical ?---19S.137.93.171 (talk) 09:10, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Merge

• Opposed As was noted in the other article's talk page, this is a practical application, that article is the underlying theory and leaving them as two separate articles seems more appropriate, though they should definitely reference each other.Somedumbyankee (talk) 04:54, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Direct Field Masking

For unformity of sound masking, the vertical locations in order of preference are: Under a raised floor, above a suspended ceiling, in an open ceiling, and direct radiating. It is not posible to create a flat panel direct radiating speaker that is uniform at all masking frequencies. Further the inverse sqaure law operates for direct speakers, but much less so for the other locations. Energy consumption for such speakers is higher than those in a plenum due to the inefficiency of the vibration process. MOST IMPORTANT: Every masking system must be tuned to the space. There is no truth that one masking spectrum fits all.

Privacy Index

Had:

The problem with speech privacy is that a PI of 50 is NOT halfway to the goal; the relationship is not a straight line. The graph below shows the Privacy Index (measurable) plotted against the actual privacy (lack of understanding). The heavy line is definitely not a straight. When speech privacy is designed into an office, the process starts on the line at the lower left of the graph and proceeds along the line to the right. The horizontal axis represents the physical improvements made in the room while the vertical axis represents what people think about the improvements. It is clear that changes up to PI=60 do not get an approval rating from occupants. It is this lack of appreciation for this fundamental fact that has resulted in bad designs. To get this important point across, the various categories of speech privacy have been made analogous to school grades as shown in the table. TODO: NOTE: Privacy Index graph is missing, and needs to be added.

I deleted the overly confused text and reference to the mystery graph that I couldn't see existing for the past year or two. The PI is nothing but 1-AI*100, and even that looks more complicated that just thinking of the distance AI is from 100... Avé[[]] 19:38, 3 February 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Avé (talk • contribs)

Comments from an earlier editor – added for the record

These have been moved from the article, where they had been left as a wiki markup comment

"Quite a lot of things wrong with the article but I can't be arsed (too tired, sorry) to figure out the correct tags. There's references to absent graphs and several double spaces (198 after I corrected probably ten), which might indicate copy/pasting from elsewhere. Might have to identify the source and figure out how much is still fair use. There's Too Much Jargon and general needlessly dry prose designed to shut out the layman instead of informing him. There's (badly done) tables that need a place in a work of reference. Probably other things. The measurements are now corrected. The metric units are placed first as proposed by http://scitation.aip.org/journals/doc/ASALIB-home/corp/standards/ANSI-Accredited_Operating_Procedures_2008.pdf , linked by http://acousticalsociety.org/standards/introduction_to_asa_standards_program (which is, at the time of writing, i.e. 2011-03-03, one of the two sources of the article)".

The above text was moved (but not written by) me --Greenmaven (talk) 02:40, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Rather than copyedit, I have listed this article for investigation at Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2012 May 17, because of the comments in the section above. --Greenmaven (talk) 02:56, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Copyright

I don't know what to do, not a regular wikipedian, but lot's of this article is taken verbatum from here http://www.soundmasking.com/whitepapers/SecWhitePaper.pdf — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pyrozoan (talk • contribs) 16:42, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Seems Very Slanted

Looking just at the section headings, one thinks "really?" I mean, "The Need For Sound Masking"? "The Fallacious Quest for Quiet"? "Why Use Sound Masking"?

EDIT: I added a NPOV tag. This article seems to read more like a persuasive essay on why sound masking is good, or like a how-to on how to install sound masking, then an encyclopedic article about sound masking.76.0.247.52 (talk) 00:00, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Seems more like a personal essay, as there is no real opposing argument and the tone appears like a personal essay. I added an ((essay-like)) tag (but also kept the other one). 108.95.137.192 (talk) 02:58, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Essay like implies personal musing, rather than technical exposition, and usually by someone one not versed in the subject matter. The guy is obviously an expert, and the technical diction is good. On the other hand, the principal author deleted the tag without comment in his edit description or discussion on the talk page. Not good.Sbalfour (talk) 02:42, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Most of the material in the article was taken from the only book on the subject. "Sound masking Done Right". The major author of this article holds the copyright for the book and the materials included here. It is not a document about 'feelings", it is document about 43 years of intimate involvement with the theory, design, manufacture, installation, and equalization of sound masking systems. One would hope that it would qualify the author as a expert. As a consequence, it is biased in the same way as Darwin's theory, it is not a historical document. This subject is not economically neutral for those selling such systems, and many of the negative comments have been made by those unfamiliar with the subject. This author recommends the addition of valuable experience to the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by BobChan2 (talk • contribs) 17:48, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

The copied text would in most circumstances be forbidden WP:MYTEXT. I'm going to nominate it for speedy deletion.Sbalfour (talk) 20:20, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

Copyright problem

I've blanked the page and listed it at WP:copyright problems. Anyone is free to work on a copyvio-free rewrite. If anyone (Pinkbeast, perhaps?) has access to the book, it would be helpful to know if the problems go right back to the original revision of the page, or if they started later (and in that case, when!). Thanks, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 17:13, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

The book was printed in 2008, and even 2008 revisions of the page are fairly clearly derived from it - eg [1] "Sound masking has been in use for many years. It is likely that Roman villas with interior fountains had the benefit of masking the sound of chariots. Even today, fountains are used in malls to provide humidity, a pleasant environment, and sound masking." vs the book "The fountains in Roman villas may have served a useful purpose in blocking out the sound of iron-rimmed chariot wheels on the cobble-stoned streets. The sound of water is still used as sound masking; visit shopping malls or buildings that have a large atrium."

The section "The Value of Sound Masking" presents four bullet points; the same four are presented in the book as "1.15 The Advantages of Sound Masking". (Of course, any given chunk of this one could say is permissible paraphrase; but the whole article can't just be the content of the book paraphrased.)

I think [2] is where the rot was introduced.

"Articulation Index (AI). It is a number from zero to one, with one representing full comprehension of speech." vs "AI is a number between 0 and 1, where 0 implies no understanding of sentences while 1 implies complete understanding."

"To get this important point across, the various categories of speech privacy have been made analogous to school grades as shown in the table" (with "Graph and Table are missing temporarily", so why write that if not just copying the book?) vs "Most people are familiar with the non-linear nature of school grades; getting half the questions correct in an exam is definitely failing."

Versions before then are basically derived from the first really coherent version in the page's history [3] and seem not to be copyvios (not of this book, anyway); versions after then all include ever-increasing quantities of material from the book. Pinkbeast (talk) 04:59, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Thank you, Pinkbeast, that's most helpful. I've now done my best to deal with this while limiting the collateral damage – please see below. The page is wholly unreferenced as a result, and will presumably need to be completely rewritten. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 14:48, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Copyright problem removed

Prior content in this article duplicated one or more previously published sources. The material was copied from: Robert Chanaud (2008), Sound Masking Done Right: Simple Solutions for Complex Problems. Copied or closely paraphrased material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.)

For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or published material; such additions will be deleted. Contributors may use copyrighted publications as a source of information, and, if allowed under fair use, may copy sentences and phrases, provided they are included in quotation marks and referenced properly. The material may also be rewritten, providing it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Therefore, such paraphrased portions must provide their source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with these policies. Thank you. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 14:48, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Why

Why did someone remove all the content???101.178.163.19 (talk) 06:45, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

It was a copyright violation and had to be removed. —C.Fred (talk) 11:46, 15 July 2019 (UTC)