Contribution
Investigating the perception of a heat pump in different audio-visual settings
* Presenting author
Abstract:
This study explores the acoustic impact of outdoor heat pump units at their installation sites and examines how the visual environment affects the perception of heat pump noise in residential settings. Using the Unreal Engine, virtual reality (VR) scenes are created to simulate heat pump installations in various configurations within gardens of single-family homes. Visually, these VR scenes vary not only by settings, contrasting suburban and countryside environments, but also by parameters of the installation environment, such as the number of reflective surfaces around the heat pump unit. Acoustically, the simulations include different heat pump sounds, also taking the varying numbers of reflective surfaces around the heat pump into account, as well as different background noises. The transfer functions from the sound sources to the listener are rendered using the tool VirtualAcoustics, which includes sound propagation models accounting for the geometric environment. This approach provides insights into how both visual and acoustic factors shape the overall experience of heat pump noise using virtual reality.