Experiments in Peak Clipping a Mixture of Speech and Acoustic Noise
Mones E. Hawley, Willard F. Meeker · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1955
Indicative experiments were performed to predict the effect on word articulation of various amounts of peak clipping on speech transmitted by an AN/M-33 AIC first-order pressure gradient microphone used in 120 db simulated propeller aircraft noise. 0, 12, 24, and 36 db of peak clipping and subsequent reamplification were used; +6 db/ octave pre-emphasis tilting (differentiating) and −6 db/octave de-emphasis tilting (integration) were also used in some experiments. Listeners in relative quiet (70 db) and in 100 and 120 db propeller aircraft noise heard the signals over headsets. In this situation of noise introduced before any processing, 24 and 36 db of clipping deteriorated word articulation scores under all conditions; no significant difference was observed between 0 and 12 db of clipping.