Monaural and Binaural Free-Field Speech Reception under Noise and Reverberation
Anna K. Nábělek, J. M. Pickett · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1973
Speech reception was studied in a single sound-treated room at reverberation times T=0.3 and T=0.6 sec, to compare binaural and monaural reception in the presence of an impulsive noise (16 imp/sec) and a quasisteady noise (a babble of eight voices). The speech and noise sources were fixed at locations, relative to the listener, to give the largest advantage for binaural reception. Binaural gain is taken as the difference in speechto-noise ratios for 60% correct speech reception comparing binaural and monaural results. At T=0.6 sec, binaural gain was 3 dB for both types of noise. At T=0.3 sec the gain was 5 dB for the babble and 4 dB for the impulsive noise. The longer reverberation caused a reduction in reception in both binaural and monaural conditions. These effects were larger for the impulsive noise and for low S/N ratios. The largest reverberation effect reduced reception from 77% to 53% words correct. [Supported by Gallaudet College.]