抄録
For the purposes of engine maintenance, it is very important for engineers to collect acoustic information on abnormalities from the equipment running noise. However, in the engine room of a ship it is difficult to collect the acoustic information as the noise levels can be as high as 100 dB. In this study, the authors investigated the ability to listen to a specific sound against a disturbingly loud background noise. We found that combustion noise disturbed the detection of other sounds (non-combustion noise) . Consequently, we recorded shell noise by microphone, and transformed the sound to electronic data. We then instantaneously attenuated the combustion noise in the sound data and played it from a speaker. This method enabled reduction of listening disturbance (masking phenomenon) due to combustion noise. A hearing support system incorporating an algorithm for the above data processing was accordingly constructed to help distinguish acoustic information from background engine room noise.
