Two soundscapes in comparison: Piazza Cavour in Rimini and Buckingham Palace Square in London

With the Agora project, research in acoustics aims to virtually reconstruct an immersive soundscape experience through the combination of 3D audio and panoramic view. The audio station, itinerant across different parts of any urban environment, uses a multichannel microphone composed of 19 channels evenly distributed over the surface of the spherical array. The output signal is an audio with a resolution equal to 3ʳᵈ order ambisonics (O3A), which renders a very accurate sound directivity to localize the different sound sources movable around the microphone. This paper presents a comparative analysis of the soundscapes of Piazza Cavour in Rimini, Italy, and Buckingham Palace Square in London, UK. These two public spaces are highly frequented by tourists for their architectural and landscape attractions. Their common factors consist of limited traffic zones, accessible only to authorized vehicles, while visitors are free to explore the architecture that dominates the squares. Environmental parameters were analyzed in terms of loudness, sharpness, prominence, and roughness, highlighting the differences between the two environments.