Assessing the Effects of Noise on Sound Identities of Historical Landmarks

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The topic was very interesting and the introduction was well written to make the study attractive. However, there were apparent problems on the methods which made the results be make of credibility. My detailed comments were in the following:

• The respondents in the study was too limited to get convictive results since only three audio experts participated the interview. Furthermore, the experts’response could not represent ordinary people’s perception and attitude because they probably had certain attitude tendency based on their professional knowledge.
• The study aimed at exploring the effects of altitude factor on finding, identifying and utilizing Quiet Areas in the urban fabric, why authors did not measure and record the sound situation in the same investigation place with different height? Maybe it easier to exclude the interference of sound context in different places on the study.
• The figures were too vague to show the detailed information particularly of the legends.
• More systematical and logical analysis are needed to support the results.

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 1, Thank you for giving us the opportunity to submit a revised draft of the manuscript “Contemporary sound identities of Thessaloniki  Roman and Byzantine landmarks; the altitude factor” for publication in the Journal of Acoustics. We appreciate the time and effort that you and the other reviewer dedicated to providing feedback on our manuscript and are grateful for the insightful comments on and valuable improvements to our paper. We have incorporated most of the suggestions, as you can read below.  Firstly, we are sorry we did not have a clear text but we did an extensive editing of English language and style where it was required, as you correctly have pointed out.  Secondly, while we appreciate the reviewer’s feedback, we could not interview more audio experts, but we think that previous research in the field has shown that a small number of interviews should be ok. As you can see in the MA thesis of  David Paquette Describing the Contemporary Sound Environment: An Analysis of Three Approaches, Their Synthesis and a Case Study of Commercial Drive, Vancouver, DC under the professor Barry Truax, the student interviewed five inhabitants. We strongly support that the opinion of the audio experts is inherent with the small number of the participants. In contrast we used the opinion of more than five hundred local  residents in a previous stage of the research so as to determine the Quiet Areas of the historic center of the city. Thirdly, thank you for pointing this out. The reviewer is correct, and this is why in Hagia Sophia square (second landmark kai study field of the study) we used a high terrace of a building so as to record and study the soundscape. In the fist landmark (Roman Agora) we studied the soundscape below the street level, because most of these ancient landmarks occupy space in lower altitudes. In future research we will manage to study the soundscape in different altitudes, so as to have a complete and more comprehensive research. Fourthly, as suggested by the reviewer, we changed the figures, trying to be more precise regarding the information about the soundscape of each field of study. Lastly, we agree with the reviewer’s assessment, so we thoroughly reviewed the results of the paper, trying to be more systematic and logical.  We think that there are a lot of limitations in this study but unfortunately keep in mind that there was not any grand so as to support a more thorough survey. We hope that by giving this paper a change to be published we should be able to continue our research, being more systematic, thorough and funded. 

Reviewer 2 Report

The research shown in the paper a type of research close to ecoacoustics and for that reason it is a good job.  Due to that it is difficult to find points or parts revisable, independently of that in the next lines I show different commentaries.

 

1. Introduction

The first part of the article shows a summary of the state of the art, the acoustics normative of Greece and the details of the areas under study. In this section, the authors summarize the objective of the work and have no corrections to be published.

 

 

2. Materials and Methods

Section 2 is a short but complete explanation of methodology employed, authors start with a description of areas where it has been developed the study, and later it has been justified procedures and details of research

That point is interesting for other authors because it is explained conscientiously steps and part of research. In point “2.5 Interviews - CRESSON Methodology” it is considered that is better for paper to show a diagram as summary after the text, it is recommended it to authors to insert this figure.

 

3. Results

The chapter of results is very complete and the organisation of items shown, are perfectly structured. At the end of this point, it will be interesting a short comparation between 3 cases in a chart or an additional section for that appointment  

 

4. Discussion and 5 .Conclusions

Last points of this document is a complete summary of the results extracted of work. About this last point, it has not commentaries from reviewer.

In general the article is right to publish with a minor review.

The research shown in the paper a type of research close to ecoacoustics and for that reason it is a good job.  Due to that it is difficult to find points or parts revisable, independently of that in the next lines I show different commentaries.

 

1. Introduction

The first part of the article shows a summary of the state of the art, the acoustics normative of Greece and the details of the areas under study. In this section, the authors summarize the objective of the work and have no corrections to be published.

 

 

2. Materials and Methods

Section 2 is a short but complete explanation of methodology employed, authors start with a description of areas where it has been developed the study, and later it has been justified procedures and details of research

That point is interesting for other authors because it is explained conscientiously steps and part of research. In point “2.5 Interviews - CRESSON Methodology” it is considered that is better for paper to show a diagram as summary after the text, it is recommended it to authors to insert this figure.

 

3. Results

The chapter of results is very complete and the organisation of items shown, are perfectly structured. At the end of this point, it will be interesting a short comparation between 3 cases in a chart or an additional section for that appointment  

 

4. Discussion and 5 .Conclusions

Last points of this document is a complete summary of the results extracted of work. About this last point, it has not commentaries from reviewer.

In general the article is right to publish with a minor review.

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 2, Thank you for giving us the opportunity to submit a revised draft of the manuscript “Contemporary sound identities of Thessaloniki  Roman and Byzantine landmarks; the altitude factor” for publication in the Journal of Acoustics. We appreciate the time and effort that you and the other reviewer dedicated to providing feedback on our manuscript and are grateful for the insightful comments on and valuable improvements to our paper. We have incorporated most of the suggestions, as you can read below.  Firstly, we did an extensive editing of English language and style where it was required, as you correctly have pointed out.  Secondly, we think this is an excellent suggestion, to explain conscientious steps and part of the  research in a diagram as a summary after the text. So as we manage to add one extra figure. Thirdly, thank you for pointing this out, to do a short comparison between the two cases in a chart, so as to be more clear about the information about the noise levels of each study area. We agree that there are a lot of limitations in this study but unfortunately keep in mind that there was not any grand so as to support a more thorough survey. We hope that by giving this paper a change to be published we should be able to continue our research, being more systematic, thorough and funded. 

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Since the authors made careful revision and rational explanation, I suggest to accept the manuscript. 

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you for the insightful comments and suggestions!

The spell check suggested has been made and minor corrections have been applied.

Thank you again