Psychoacoustic noise metrics for pickleball sound

Pickleball is the fastest-growing sport in the US, with over 26 000 outdoor pickleball courts built or converted since 2018. The hard paddle and ball used in the sport produce a high-frequency impulse noise burst which leads to many more noise complaints than from tennis or most other racquet sports. The annoyance from pickleball sound has also led to discussions of the most appropriate way to measure pickleball noise acoustically, with different proponents using long-term LAeq or SEL with an impulsive penalty, LApk, LAFmax, or per-unit SEL (sometimes with another impulsive penalty added). This study applies existing perceptual metrics for annoyance from impulsive noise to pickleball strikes based on the level difference (DL) and onset rate (Ron) of the strikes. Correlations between different acoustic metrics and the perceptual metrics are examined, with some comments given regarding those with the best predictive power for pickleball noise annoyance in municipal noise codes.