Predicting Binaural Speech Intelligibility in Architectural Acoustics

Culling, John F.; Lavandier, Mathieu; Jelfs, Sam

doi:10.1007/978-3-642-37762-4_16

Cited by 8 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…Virtualization methods similar to those used previously (Culling, 2013;Culling et al, 2013) were used to simulate real-world sound sources in a moderately reverberant room with dimensions 5 Â 4 Â 2.5 m (L Â W Â H). The absorption coefficients of the internal surfaces were all set to 0.3.…”

Section: B Room Simulation Equipment and Conditionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluation of a method for enhancing interaural level differences at low frequencies

Moore¹,

Kolarik²,

Stone³

et al. 2016

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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A method (called binaural enhancement) for enhancing interaural level differences at low frequencies, based on estimates of interaural time differences, was developed and evaluated. Five conditions were compared, all using simulated hearing-aid processing: (1) Linear amplification with frequency-response shaping; (2) binaural enhancement combined with linear amplification and frequency-response shaping; (3) slow-acting four-channel amplitude compression with independent compression at the two ears (AGC4CH); (4) binaural enhancement combined with four-channel compression (BE-AGC4CH); and (5) four-channel compression but with the compression gains synchronized across ears. Ten hearing-impaired listeners were tested, and gains and compression ratios for each listener were set to match targets prescribed by the CAM2 fitting method. Stimuli were presented via headphones, using virtualization methods to simulate listening in a moderately reverberant room. The intelligibility of speech at ±60° azimuth in the presence of competing speech on the opposite side of the head at ±60° azimuth was not affected by the binaural enhancement processing. Sound localization was significantly better for condition BE-AGC4CH than for condition AGC4CH for a sentence, but not for broadband noise, lowpass noise, or lowpass amplitude-modulated noise. The results suggest that the binaural enhancement processing can improve localization for sounds with distinct envelope fluctuations.

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Section: B Room Simulation Equipment and Conditionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluation of a method for enhancing interaural level differences at low frequencies

Moore¹,

Kolarik²,

Stone³

et al. 2016

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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show abstract

“…Beutelmann and Brand (2006) previously observed that spatial release from masking was not ordinally related to the RT 60 of different rooms. Indeed, Culling et al (2013) have argued that RT 60 is a completely inappropriate statistic for considering speech intelligibility in noise, particularly if its interpretation is not moderated by room volume and likely source distances. In general, the direct-to-reverberant ratio of the interferers is a more accurate guide to the influence of reverberation.…”

Section: Effects Of Reverberationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Speech intelligibility in virtual restaurants

Culling¹

2016

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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Speech reception thresholds (SRTs) for a target voice on the same virtual table were measured in various restaurant simulations under conditions of masking by between one and eight interferers at other tables. Results for different levels of reverberation and different simulation techniques were qualitatively similar. SRTs increased steeply with the number of interferers, reflecting progressive failure to perceptually unmask the target speech as the acoustic scene became more complex. For a single interferer, continuous noise was the most effective masker, and a single interfering voice of either gender was least effective. With two interferers, evidence of informational masking emerged as a difference in SRT between forward and reversed speech, but SRTs for all interferer types progressively converged at four and eight interferers. In simulation based on a real room, this occurred at a signal-to-noise ratio of around −5 dB.

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“…The version lavandier2022 using ear signals as inputs is well adapted for extension towards non-stationary maskers (see vicente2020nh below). That being written, the two models are conceptually identical and very close in terms of computation, thus producing very similar predictions, validated across a wide range of anechoic [19,23] and reverberated [20] conditions.…”

Section: Modelsmentioning

confidence: 86%

A series of SNR-based speech intelligibility models in the Auditory Modeling Toolbox

2022

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This technical paper presents a series of speech intelligibility models that have been developed since the original version proposed by Lavandier and Culling [(2010). Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 127, 387–399]. This binaural model accounts for better-ear listening and binaural unmasking to predict the intelligibility of a near-field target speech among multiple stationary noise sources in rooms for normal-hearing listeners. Subsequent model versions allowed to consider a reverberated speech target in the far-field, envelope-modulated noise sources, and hearing-impaired listeners. As an intermediate step before considering speech maskers, a monaural version incorporating a harmonic-cancellation mechanism was recently developed to account for the effect of a stationary harmonic masker. This technical review is oriented towards model users and explains when and how each model should be used, points at its advantages and limitations, and provides an example of predictions using a data set from the literature. All these models along with the data, signals and code used to prepare the presented figures are made available within the Auditory Modeling Toolbox (AMT 1.1).

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Predicting Binaural Speech Intelligibility in Architectural Acoustics

Cited by 8 publications

References 30 publications

Evaluation of a method for enhancing interaural level differences at low frequencies

Evaluation of a method for enhancing interaural level differences at low frequencies

Speech intelligibility in virtual restaurants

A series of SNR-based speech intelligibility models in the Auditory Modeling Toolbox

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