Reporting physical parameters in soundscape studies

International audience; Most reports on soundscape studies concentrate on the perceptual aspects of the experiment. It is therefore difficult to extract generic knowledge from these studies due to the lack of a physical description of the situation. A number of soundscape scientists have responded to a small survey and reported on both what kind of measurement procedures they are currently using, and on what kind of data (acoustical and non-acoustical) they would like to see in other studies. Binaural recordings are preferred by many of the respondents, but these recordings are only used for subjective lab assessments and comparative studies. They are not used for any objective measurements or analysis. Simple mono recordings are used to measure standard acoustical parameters like level, level distribution, loudness, roughness, sharpness, etc. The paper will not discuss the relevance of these parameters. Some of the soundscape data requested by the survey respondents can only be found and assessed subjectively, for instance identification of sound sources, signal to background level for individual sources, etc. A proposal for minimum requirements for reporting physical parameters, and in particular acoustical parameters, in soundscape studies will be discussed.