Case-study evaluations of the acoustical designs of renovated university classrooms

The acoustical characteristics of 14 university classrooms at the University of British Columbia were measured before and after renovation—seven of these are discussed in detail here. From these measurements, and theoretical considerations, values of quantities used to assess each classroom configuration were predicted, and used to evaluate renovation quality. Information on each renovation was determined with the help of the university campus-planning office and/or the project acoustical consultant. These were related to the evaluation results in order to determine the relationship between design and acoustical quality. The criteria focused on the quality of verbal communication in the classrooms. Room-average Speech Intelligibility (SI) and its physical correlate, Speech Transmission Index (STI), were used to quantify verbal-communication quality. A simplified STI-calculation procedure was applied. The results indicate that some renovations were beneficial, others were not. Verbal-communication quality varied from ‘poor’ to ‘good’. The effect of a renovation depends on a complex interplay between changes in the reverberation and changes in the signal-to-noise level difference, as affected by sound absorption and the source outputs. Renovations which reduce noise are beneficial unless signal-to-noise level differences remain optimal. Renovations often put too much emphasis on adding sound absorption to control reverberation, at the expense of lower speech levels, particularly at the backs of classrooms. The absorption and noise contributed by room occupants has apparently often been neglected.     

Acoustic Analysis of Pathological Voices Compressedwith MPEG System

The MPEG-1 Layer 3 compression schema of audio signal, commonly known as mp3, has caused a great impact in recent years as it has reached high compression rates while conserving a high sound quality. Music and speech samples compressed at high bitrates are perceptually indistinguishable from the original samples, but very little was known about how compression acoustically affects the voice signal. A previous work with normal voices showed a high fidelity at high-bitrate compressions both in voice parameters and the amplitude-frequency spectrum. In the present work, dysphonic voices were tested through two studies. In the first study, spectrograms, long-term average spectra (LTAS), and fast Fourier transform (FFT) spectra of compressed and original samples of running speech were compared. In the second study, intensities, formant frequencies, formant bandwidths, and a multidimensional set of voice parameters were tested in a set of sustained phonations. Results showed that compression at high bitrates (96 and 128 kbps) preserved the relevant acoustic properties of the pathological voices. With compressions at lower bitrates, fidelity decreases, introducing some important alterations. Results from both works, Gonzalez and Cervera and this paper, open up the possibility of using MPEG-compression at high bitrates to store or transmit high-quality speech recordings, without altering their acoustic properties.     

Selection of meaningless steady noise for masking of speech

This paper focuses on masking speech with meaningless steady noise as a way of realizing a comfortable sound environment. As a basis for research, meaningless steady noise at minimum sound pressure levels for masking of male or female meaningful speech is considered, based on psychological experiments using a method of adjustment. From the results, band-limited pink noise can be selected as the most effective noise for masking of speech. In the case of speech with a lower sound pressure level, the sound pressure level of the meaningless steady noise needs to be a little higher.     

A multi-target approach for isolated word recognition using artificial neural network

I.TntroductionStatisticalandneuralnetworkmcthodsforpatternclassiflcationusesignificantlydifTerentapproachesintrainingaclassificr.Inthestatistica1approach,thcformationofaclassifier1arge1ydependsonthestatisticsofthetrainingpatternsand,insomecases,theassumptionsaboutthedistributionofthepopulation.Theneuralnetworkmethodisnon-parametricandcanbeadaptivcinthetrainingprocessl'l.Becauseofitssimplicityandflexibility,theneuralnetworkhasbecnincreasing1yusedforpatternclassiflcation.Itisnowwe11knownthatan…     

利用火焰原子吸收中的增感效应测定十二醇聚氧乙烯醚的加成数

本文利用表面活性剂在原子吸收中的增感效应测定了一系列不同平均加成数的十二醇聚氧乙烯醚对镁的增感百分数,并使之与加成数相关,得到了一个线性较好的回归方程式。利用此式可以准确地测定此系列表面活性剂的加成数。     

磷酸三丁酯增敏极谱法测定铜的研究

在０．００４ｍｏｌ／Ｌ ＨＣｌ－１×１０＾－３ｍｏｌ／Ｌ ＳＣＮ＾－－５×１０＾－５ｍｏｌ／Ｌ磷酸三丁酯（ＴＢＰ）溶液中，Ｃｕ＾２＋可在－０．４２Ｖ（ｖｓ．ＳＣＥ）产生灵敏的极谱波，波高较无ＴＢＰ存在时增加近３倍，二阶导数峰电流与０．００５￣４．０ｍｇ／Ｌ Ｃｕ＾２＋呈线性关系。研究了极谱波性质及增敏机理，表明该极谱波为配合物吸附波，ＴＢＰ起协同吸附作用。本法已用于实际样品分析，结果满意。