  Reviving natural ventilation (NV) for urban sustainability presents
challenges for indoor acoustic comfort. Active control and interference-based
noise mitigation strategies, such as the use of loudspeakers, offer potential
solutions to achieve acoustic comfort while maintaining NV. However, these
approaches are not commonly integrated or evaluated from a perceptual
standpoint. This study examines the perceptual and objective aspects of an
active-noise-control (ANC)-based "anti-noise" window (ANW) and its integration
with informational masking (IM) in a model bedroom. Forty participants assessed
the ANW in a three-way interaction involving noise types (traffic, train, and
aircraft), maskers (bird, water), and ANC (on, off). The evaluation focused on
perceived annoyance (PAY; ISO/TS 15666), perceived affective quality (ISO/TS
12913-2), loudness (PLN), and included an open-ended qualitative assessment.
Despite minimal objective reduction in decibel-based indicators and a slight
increase in psychoacoustic sharpness, the ANW alone demonstrated significant
reductions in PAY and PLN, as well as an improvement in ISO pleasantness across
all noise types. The addition of maskers generally enhanced overall acoustic
comfort, although water masking led to increased PLN. Furthermore, the
combination of ANC with maskers showed interaction effects, with both maskers
significantly reducing PAY compared to ANC alone.
