Intelligibility of reverberant speech with amplification: Limitation of speech intelligibility metrics, and a preliminary examination of an alternative approach

Publisher:
Scientific Research
Publication Type:
Journal Article
Citation:
Journal of Applied Mathematics and Physics Journal of Applied Mathematics and Physics, 2015, 3 (2), pp. 177 - 186
Issue Date:
2015-11
Full metadata record
This study examines the effect of speech level on intelligibility in different reverberation condi- tions, and explores the potential of loudness-based reverberation parameters proposed by Lee et al. [J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 131(2), 1194-1205 (2012)] to explain the effect of speech level on intelligi- bility in various reverberation conditions. Listening experiments were performed with three speech levels (LAeq of 55 dB, 65 dB and 75 dB) and three reverberation conditions (T20 of 1.0 s, 1.9 s and 4.0 s), and subjects listened to speech stimuli through headphones. Collected subjective data were compared with two conventional speech intelligibility parameters (Speech Intelligibility In- dex and Speech Transmission Index) and two loudness-based reverberation parameters (EDTN and TN). Results reveal that the effect of speech level on intelligibility changes with a room’s re- verberation conditions, and that increased level results in reduced intelligibility in highly rever- berant conditions. EDTN and TN explain this finding better than do STI and SII, because they con- sider many psychoacoustic phenomena important for the modeling of the effect of speech level varying with reverberation.
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