Resumo

PADILLA-ORTIZ, A. L.  e  ORDUNA-BUSTAMANTE, F.. Binaural Speech Intelligibility and Interaural Cross-Correlation Under Disturbing Noise and Reverberation. J. appl. res. technol [online]. 2012, vol.10, n.3, pp.347-360. ISSN 2448-6736.

Subjective tests were carried out in order to investigate speech intelligibility, and the possible relative improvements that can be obtained in practical applications to acoustic communication systems, for different forms of presentation through headphones: monaural, monophonic, binaural at 0° (in front of the listener) and binaural at ±30° (right or left, relative to the listener), played back undisturbed, and also with the addition of extreme levels of disturbing noise and reverberation, with a signal to noise ratio of SNR = -10 dB, and a reverberation time of T₆₀ = 10 s. The influence of interaural cross-correlation (IACC) of the disturbance on speech intelligibility was also studied. Phonetically balanced words in Spanish, uttered by a female speaker, were used as speech material, which were contaminated with interaurally correlated and uncorrelated noise and reverberation. Results indicate advantages of binaural speech intelligibility under adverse listening conditions; with slight improvements observed when listening under interaurally correlated noise at an angle off-center, for azimuth angles of ±30°, relative to listening at 0°. Additionally, results show that speech intelligibility improves slightly when the disturbing reverberation has a low interaural cross-correlation (IACC).

Palavras-chave : Speech intelligibility; binaural sound; noise; reverberation; interaural cross-correlation.

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