Comparison of speech intelligibility in a real and virtual living room using loudspeaker and headphone presentations
Virtual acoustics enables hearing research and audiology in ecologically relevant and realistic acoustic environments, while offering experimental control and reproducibility of classical psychoacoustics and speech intelligibility tests. Hereby, indoor environments are highly relevant, where listeni...
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EDP Sciences
2025-01-01
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| Series: | Acta Acustica |
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| Online Access: | https://acta-acustica.edpsciences.org/articles/aacus/full_html/2025/01/aacus240079/aacus240079.html |
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| author | Schütze Julia Kirsch Christoph Kollmeier Birger Ewert Stephan D. |
| author_facet | Schütze Julia Kirsch Christoph Kollmeier Birger Ewert Stephan D. |
| author_sort | Schütze Julia |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Virtual acoustics enables hearing research and audiology in ecologically relevant and realistic acoustic environments, while offering experimental control and reproducibility of classical psychoacoustics and speech intelligibility tests. Hereby, indoor environments are highly relevant, where listening and speech communication frequently involve multiple targets and interferers, as well as connected adjacent spaces that may create challenging acoustics. Hence, a controllable laboratory environment is evaluated here (by room acoustical parameters and speech intelligibility) which closely resembles a typical German living room with an adjacent kitchen. Target and interferer positions were permuted over four different locations, including an acoustically challenging position of a target in the kitchen with interrupted line of sight. Speech intelligibility was compared in the real room, in virtual acoustic representations, and in standard anechoic audiological configurations. Three presentation modes were tested: headphones, loudspeaker rendering on a small-scale, four-channel loudspeaker array in a sound-attenuated listening booth, and a three-dimensional 86-channel loudspeaker array in an anechoic chamber. The results showed that the target talker in the coupled room requires higher signal to noise ratios (SNRs) at threshold than typical indoor conditions. Moreover, for the stationary speech shaped interferer, effects of room acoustics were negligible. For a majority of target positions, no difference between the four-channel and the large-scale loudspeaker array were found, with an overall good agreement to the real room. This indicates that ecologically valid testing is feasible using a clinically applicable small-scale loudspeaker array. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-0d1e90a0cea44818bc16acf08ee19643 |
| institution | Kabale University |
| issn | 2681-4617 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-01-01 |
| publisher | EDP Sciences |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Acta Acustica |
| spelling | doaj-art-0d1e90a0cea44818bc16acf08ee196432025-02-05T10:39:19ZengEDP SciencesActa Acustica2681-46172025-01-019610.1051/aacus/2024068aacus240079Comparison of speech intelligibility in a real and virtual living room using loudspeaker and headphone presentationsSchütze Julia0https://orcid.org/0009-0001-5715-6140Kirsch Christoph1https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7270-4715Kollmeier Birger2Ewert Stephan D.3https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1644-4947Medical Physics and Cluster of Excellence Hearing4all, Carl von Ossietzky Universität OldenburgMedical Physics and Cluster of Excellence Hearing4all, Carl von Ossietzky Universität OldenburgMedical Physics and Cluster of Excellence Hearing4all, Carl von Ossietzky Universität OldenburgMedical Physics and Cluster of Excellence Hearing4all, Carl von Ossietzky Universität OldenburgVirtual acoustics enables hearing research and audiology in ecologically relevant and realistic acoustic environments, while offering experimental control and reproducibility of classical psychoacoustics and speech intelligibility tests. Hereby, indoor environments are highly relevant, where listening and speech communication frequently involve multiple targets and interferers, as well as connected adjacent spaces that may create challenging acoustics. Hence, a controllable laboratory environment is evaluated here (by room acoustical parameters and speech intelligibility) which closely resembles a typical German living room with an adjacent kitchen. Target and interferer positions were permuted over four different locations, including an acoustically challenging position of a target in the kitchen with interrupted line of sight. Speech intelligibility was compared in the real room, in virtual acoustic representations, and in standard anechoic audiological configurations. Three presentation modes were tested: headphones, loudspeaker rendering on a small-scale, four-channel loudspeaker array in a sound-attenuated listening booth, and a three-dimensional 86-channel loudspeaker array in an anechoic chamber. The results showed that the target talker in the coupled room requires higher signal to noise ratios (SNRs) at threshold than typical indoor conditions. Moreover, for the stationary speech shaped interferer, effects of room acoustics were negligible. For a majority of target positions, no difference between the four-channel and the large-scale loudspeaker array were found, with an overall good agreement to the real room. This indicates that ecologically valid testing is feasible using a clinically applicable small-scale loudspeaker array.https://acta-acustica.edpsciences.org/articles/aacus/full_html/2025/01/aacus240079/aacus240079.htmlvirtual acousticsecological validityspeech audiometry |
| spellingShingle | Schütze Julia Kirsch Christoph Kollmeier Birger Ewert Stephan D. Comparison of speech intelligibility in a real and virtual living room using loudspeaker and headphone presentations Acta Acustica virtual acoustics ecological validity speech audiometry |
| title | Comparison of speech intelligibility in a real and virtual living room using loudspeaker and headphone presentations |
| title_full | Comparison of speech intelligibility in a real and virtual living room using loudspeaker and headphone presentations |
| title_fullStr | Comparison of speech intelligibility in a real and virtual living room using loudspeaker and headphone presentations |
| title_full_unstemmed | Comparison of speech intelligibility in a real and virtual living room using loudspeaker and headphone presentations |
| title_short | Comparison of speech intelligibility in a real and virtual living room using loudspeaker and headphone presentations |
| title_sort | comparison of speech intelligibility in a real and virtual living room using loudspeaker and headphone presentations |
| topic | virtual acoustics ecological validity speech audiometry |
| url | https://acta-acustica.edpsciences.org/articles/aacus/full_html/2025/01/aacus240079/aacus240079.html |
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