Koehnke J, Besing J M
Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology, University of South Alabama, Mobile, USA.
Ear Hear. 1996 Jun;17(3):211-7. doi: 10.1097/00003446-199606000-00004.
The development of a test of virtual speech intelligibility in noise that enables assessment in typical, everyday listening situations. To eliminate extraneous confounding factors, digital signal processing was incorporated to simulate listening environments and source locations and allow presentation of stimuli via earphones.
Source-to-eardrum transfer functions measured on KEMAR for various source locations in anechoic and reverberant environments were used to process monosyllabic words and speech-spectrum noise. Speech intelligibility was measured for three speech and noise configurations in two environments using an adaptive procedure to determine the signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio for 50% intelligibility.
Normal-hearing listeners achieved 50% intelligibility of monosyllabic words at significantly lower S/N ratios in a virtual anechoic environment than in a virtual reverberant environment. Speech intelligibility improved significantly in both environments when the speech and noise sources were separated, but the intelligibility gain in the anechoic environment was four times larger than in the reverberant environment.
This test is easy to administer and score, and it provides a means for measuring: 1) the effects of separating speech and noise sources and 2) the effects of reverberation on speech intelligibility in noise while eliminating confounding factors such as calibration.
开发一种在噪声中测试虚拟语音可懂度的方法，以便在典型的日常聆听情境中进行评估。为消除无关的混杂因素，采用数字信号处理来模拟聆听环境和声源位置，并允许通过耳机呈现刺激。
在消声和混响环境中，针对KEMAR上各种声源位置测量的源到鼓膜传递函数，用于处理单音节词和语音频谱噪声。在两种环境中，针对三种语音和噪声配置，使用自适应程序来确定50%可懂度时的信噪比，从而测量语音可懂度。
在虚拟消声环境中，听力正常的听众在显著低于虚拟混响环境中的信噪比下，实现了单音节词50%的可懂度。当语音和噪声源分离时，两种环境中的语音可懂度均显著提高，但消声环境中的可懂度增益是混响环境中的四倍。
该测试易于实施和评分，它提供了一种测量方法：1）分离语音和噪声源的效果；2）混响对噪声中语音可懂度的影响，同时消除诸如校准等混杂因素。
