Relationships between speech intelligibility and objective acoustical parameters for architectural features in Catholic churches

Abstract

This study reports on subjective and objective acoustical field measurements made in a major survey of 36 Roman Catholic churches in Portugal built in the last 14 centuries. Monaural acoustical measurements (RT, EDT, C80, D50, TS, L, and RASTI) were taken at several source/receiver locations in each church. A group of college students was asked to judge the intelligibility of speech by evaluating live speech at similar locations in each room. This paper complements those presented at the 1996 Indianapolis and Honolulu ASA Meetings and concentrates exclusively on the relationships of the speech intelligibility averaged values with the objective room acoustics measures and with some architectural features of the churches. The averaged results by church are graphed and analyzedby comparisons. Correlation analyses and statistical modeling identified some relationships among the measures. For instance, squared cor- relation coefficients (R2) of 0.67 were found for the relationships: SPEECH-RT AND SPEECH-TS. Between SPEECH and RASTI only a maximum R2 of 0.50 was found. Regarding the churches’ architectural features, the maximum R2 found was 0.52 between SPEECH and NAVE HEIGHT. A general linear model including several architectural features increased the R2 to 0.72. [Work supported by FEUP and ESMAE/IPP–Portugal.] [See NOISE-CON Proceedings for full paper.]

The Determination of Acoustical Absorbing Materials in The “Al-Marwah” Room of “Al-Akbar” Mosque in Surabaya using Objective Parameters Approximation

“…Konsep "akustik yang baik" mencakup suatu kombinasi dari parameter obyektif dan subyektif. Untuk dapat menyatakan ukuran kejelasan percakapan dikenal dua jenis studi untuk memberikan penilaian dalam akustik ruang (Carvalho 2000;Steeneken 1999), yaitu:  Studi subyektif, didasarkan pada penggunaan pembicara dan pendengar dalam memberikan evaluasi terhadap parameter subyektif (loudness, intimacy, reverberance, envelopment, balance, clarity, gema, dan overall impression) pada beberapa titik didalam ruang;  Studi obyektif, didasarkan pada parameter fisik jalur penjalaran suara dalam memberikan evaluasi terhadap parameter obyektif (waktu dengung, EDT, C50 atau C80, D50, TS, AI, %Alcons dan STI atau RASTI) pada beberapa titik didalam ruang. Beberapa ukuran obyektif ini banyak memanfaatkan nisbah dari energi pantulan awal terhadap energi suara totalnya untuk melihat kemampuan pendengar terhadap susunan sinyal suara ketika mendengarkan didalam suatu ruang.…”

Feasibility of subjective speech intelligibility assessment based on auralization

“…At present, there are four ways to assess subjective speech intelligibility. (1) Speaker reads the word lists at a certain sound pressure level and velocity in auditorium [1,2]. (2) The word lists recorded in an anechoic chamber were reproduced by loudspeaker in auditorium [3].…”

Acoustics of Apulian-Romanesque Churches: An Experimental Survey

“…One of the first studies on the acoustic characteristics of churches was published in 1953 by Raes and Sacerdote who analysed two Roman Basilicas [1]. Since then, other papers have been written on this subject [2][3][4][5][6], and in the last decade many research groups have been carrying out systematic studies on churches built in Switzerland [7], Portugal [8][9][10][11][12][13], Spain [14][15][16][17], and Serbia [18].…”

“…RASTI was measured in many Swiss churches and in all Spanish and Portuguese churches, where other monaural acoustic parameters were measured as well. The Portuguese survey took into account several aspects: the correlations between acoustic measures [8], their relationship with architectural features [9], with architectural style [10], and with subjective judgments [11]. Recently, the effect of architectural characteristics [12], sound-reinforcement systems [20], and occupancy [21] on RASTI measures was investigated as well.…”

“…Some of the aforementioned papers [7,9,11,19] showed that there is a dependence between several acoustic parameters and architectural style. The liturgy played an even more important role.…”