Variation of Subjective Responses by Acoustic Performance Improvement of the Community Sports Facilities with Lightweight Panel

The recent improvement in the quality of living has led to greater interest in health and to constant establishment of community sports facilities which are not dependent on seasons or weather. However, lightweight panel, which is convenient and cheap, has been used as a finished material for most of the existing community sports facilities, which, thus, have acoustic defect with excessive echoes. Although acoustic simulation is used to change finished material and improve acoustic performance, there are significant differences from subjective satisfaction among people after the improvement. From this perspective, this study aimed to conduct a psycho-acoustic experiment to see the variation in subjective responses among people on the basis of the data concerning acoustic performance in community sports facilities finished with lightweight panel. After improving acoustic performance in terms of optimum reverberation time in community sports facilities where acoustic defect was found, such evaluation vocabularies as “reverberant”, “loudness”, and “diffusion” got lower responses while “intimacy”, “definition”, “clarity”, “warmth”, and “balance” got higher responses. It was therefore found that subjective responses could be improved along with the improved acoustic performance in community sports facilities with the problem of excessive echoes. It is expected that this study will be able to provide useful data for improving acoustic performance in similar community sports facilities.