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Irrelevant speech from co-workers has consistently been listed as one of the major nuisances within open-plan work environments. To explore the psychoacoustic basis of the so-called irrelevant speech effect (ISE; which causes cognitive decline and increases acoustic distraction) within a multi-talker context, a series of laboratory-based experiments were run. These experiments used room acoustical simulations of various open-plan office environments within a climate-controlled chamber to test several factors relevant to the ISE. These factors included the number of simultaneously active talkers, their spatial arrangements, sound pressure levels and the semanticity of speech. The main findings thus far indicate that multi-talker speech lead to a stronger ISE than speech from a single talker, which further interacts with the overall sound level, semanticity, etc., to exhibit a more complicated effect than what has been proposed in previous studies. The effect of the number of active talkers alone suggests reconsiderations of some assumptions in the ISO 3382-3. More generally, the perception of speech “babble” seems to be affected by multiple factors in a realistic working environment. Some of our research is directly related to characterising speech babble and its function as a beneficial sound masker in multi-talker environments.

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ISO 3382-3:2012 is the international standard for measuring the acoustics of open-plan offices. These measurements are performed in unoccupied offices, and it has recently been shown that some of the ISO 3382-3 metrics, especially distraction distance, are useful in predicting the occupants’ perceived disturbance due to noise. The current research compares the ISO 3382-3 metrics, with several psychoacoustic parameters (loudness, fluctuation strength, etc.) derived from measurements done in an occupied state of open-plan offices, in terms of their usefulness in predicting occupants’ perception of several aspects of workplace noise. This comparison was based on using measurements performed in several offices in both occupied and unoccupied states, along with a workplace noise survey that was conducted in these offices. The results will enable a more comprehensive understanding of noise-related issues in open-plan offices, as it involves both physical acoustic, and psychoacoustic considerations.