Listening difficulty as a subjective measure for evaluation of speech transmission performance in public spaces

Listening difficulty ratings, using words with high word familiarity, are proposed as a new subjective measure for the evaluation of speech transmission in public spaces to provide realistic and objective results. Two listening tests were performed to examine their validity, compared with intelligibility scores. The tests included a reverberant signal and noise as detrimental sounds. The subject was asked to repeat each word and simultaneously to rate the listening difficulty into one of four categories: (1) not difficult, (2) a little difficult, (3) fairly difficult, and (4) extremely difficult. After the tests, the four categories were reclassified into, not difficult [response (1)] and some level of difficulty, (the other 3 responses). Listening difficulty is defined as the percentage of the total number of responses indicating some level of difficulty [i.e. not (1)]. The results of two listening tests demonstrated that listening difficulty ratings can evaluate speech transmission performance more accurately and sensitively than intelligibility scores for sound fields with higher speech transmission performance.     

Acoustic comfort evaluation in urban open public spaces

This paper presents the results of an intensive questionnaire survey and objective measurements on soundscape, aiming at the evaluation of acoustic comfort in urban open public spaces. From summer 2001 to spring 2002, 9200 interviews were made for four seasons in 14 urban open public spaces across Europe. The results suggest that the subjective evaluation of the sound level generally relates well with the mean L_eq, especially when the sound level is below a certain level, which is 73 dBA on the basis of this study. However, considerable differences have been found between the subjective evaluation of the sound level and the acoustic comfort evaluation: people tend to show more tolerance in terms of acoustic comfort evaluation. The background sound level has been found to be an important index in evaluating soundscape in urban open public spaces - a lower background level tends to make people feel quieter. Analyses of individual sound elements show that the acoustic comfort evaluation is greatly affected by the sound source type - introducing a pleasant sound can considerably improve the acoustic comfort, even when its sound level is rather high. No significant difference was found among different age groups in terms of subjective evaluation of a sound level, whereas in terms of acoustic comfort, there were significant differences.     

Optimum speech level to minimize listening difficulty in public spaces

For ideal speech communication in public spaces, it is important to determine the optimum speech level for various background noise levels. However, speech intelligibility scores, which is conventionally used as the subjective listening test to measure the quality of speech communication, is near perfect in most everyday situations. For this reason, it is proposed to determine optimum speech levels for speech communication in public spaces by using listening difficulty ratings. Two kinds of listening test were carried out in this work. The results of the tests and our previous work [M. Morimoto, H. Sato, and M. Kobayashi, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 116, 1607-1613 (2004)] are jointly discussed for suggesting the relation between the optimum speech level and background noise level. The results demonstrate that: (1) optimum speech level is constant when background noise level is lower than 40 dBA, (2) optimum speech level appears to be the level, which maintains around 15 dBA of SN ratio when the background noise level is more than 40 dBA, and (3) listening difficulty increases as speech level increases under the condition where SN ratio is good enough to keep intelligibility near perfect.     

A technique for analysing the transmission of sound pulses through open plan spaces

A technique is described which enables the major reflections produced by a pulse in an open plan space to be identified, isolated and their frequency spectra determined. No existing pulse source was found to be completely suitable for this purpose and the paper reports the development of a new source which gives a short, clean pulse from a blank cartridge by providing a free combustion zone. An application of the technique to the measurement of the oblique incidence absorption properties of a ceiling is described.     

Contributions of various transmission paths to speech privacy of open ceiling meeting rooms in open-plan offices

Installing open ceiling meeting rooms inside a large open-plan office provides a solution to increase speech privacy and to reduce speech disturbance in the office. The open ceiling meeting rooms have advantages of low cost construction and flexibility, but have lower speech privacy than that of enclosed rooms due to the open ceiling. Existing research shows that many factors should be taken into account to achieve good speech privacy in open-plan offices and improving only one of these factors may result in little improvement, so it is important to distinguish contributions of different acoustic transmission paths of open ceiling meeting rooms in open-plan offices. This paper proposes an impulse response separation method to quantify contributions of various acoustic paths of open ceiling rooms on speech privacy in open-plan offices. The method is verified with simulations based on the Odeon software and the experiments carried out in 3 different types of rooms. Finally, the proposed method is applied to the Fabpod, a semi enclosed meeting room located in a large indoor office at the Design Research Institute of the RMIT University, to obtain the contributions of different acoustic transmission paths to its speech privacy. The method proposed in this paper and the knowledge obtained are useful for architects to improve the acoustic performance of the next generation Fabpods which are now under design at RMIT University.     

Temporary threshold shift caused by combined steady-state and impulse noises

Temporary threshold shift (TTS) measurements on 11 subjects, resulting from exposures to steady-state noise, impulse noise, and combinations of both types of noise are reported. Twenty minute exposures to wide-band steady-state noise at levels of 78, 84, 90 and 96 dBA, and impulse noise at levels of 96, 102, 108, 114, 120, 126 and 132 dB(peak), and repetition rate of 3·2 pulses/s, were used. When a hazardous level of steady-state noise was combined with various levels of impulse noise, there was a significant reduction in the measured TTS at 4 and 6 kHz. This reduction was greatest when the peak level of the pulse exceeded the r.m.s. level of the steady-state noise by 6–18 dB. When a hazardous level of the pulse was combined with several levels of steady-state noise, no significant reduction in TTS was observed. These findings are interpreted as a result of acoustic reflex stimulation; the pulses superimposed on a hazardous steady-state noise continually re-activated the reflex and prevented fatigue. The converse did not apply, that is, the non-hazardous (but high-level) steady-state noise did not appear to counteract fatigue resulting from hazardous impulse noise.     

Disruption of writing by background speech: The role of speech transmission index

Speech transmission index (STI) is an objective measure of the acoustic properties of office environments and is used to specify norms for acceptable acoustic work conditions. Yet, the tasks used to evaluate the effects of varying STIs on work performance have often been focusing on memory (as memory of visually presented words) and reading tasks and may not give a complete view of the severity even of low STI values (i.e., when speech intelligibility is low). Against this background, we used a more typical office-work task in the present study. The participants were asked to write short essays (5 min per essay) in 5 different STI conditions (0.08; 0.23; 0.34; 0.50; and 0.71). Writing fluency dropped drastically and the number of pauses longer than 5 s increased at STI values above 0.23. This study shows that realistic work-related performance drops even at low STI values and has implications for how to evaluate acoustic conditions in school and office environments.     

Numerical modelling of the speech intelligibility in dining spaces

The objective of this paper is to study the basic characteristics of conversation intelligibility in dining spaces where the seat number and occupancy level are relatively high, and to investigate the effectiveness of strategic architectural acoustic treatments on improving the intelligibility. A radiosity-based computer model has been developed and a parametric study has been carried out using the model. Computation in a typical dining hall shows that a design merely based on the current guidelines for space use may lead to very poor conversation intelligibility. Increasing boundary absorption can typically increase the speech transmission index (STI) by 0.2-0.4. For a given amount of absorption, in a regularly-shaped dining hall the difference in intelligibility between various absorber arrangements is generally negligible, whereas in a flat or long dining hall it is important to strategically arrange the absorbers. The improvement in intelligibility by enlarging the area per diner, changing the ceiling height, and increasing the length/width ratio has also been investigated. For a given room condition, the model can give the maximum number of seats according to the requirement in intelligibility.     

Probabilistic solution of nonlinear oscillators excited by combined Gaussian and Poisson white noises

The stationary probability density function (PDF) solution of the stochastic response of nonlinear oscillators is investigated in this paper. The external excitation is assumed to be a combination of Gaussian and Poisson white noises. The PDF solution is governed by the generalized Kolmogorov equation which is solved by the exponential-polynomial closure (EPC) method. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of the EPC method, different nonlinear oscillators are considered in numerical analysis. Nonlinearity exists either in displacement or in velocity for these nonlinear oscillators. The impulse arrival rate, mono-modal PDF and bi-modal PDF are also considered in this study. Compared to the PDF given by Monte Carlo simulation, the EPC method presents good agreement with the simulated result, which can also be observed in the tail region of the PDF solution.     

Influence of modulation formats on FWM noises in FDM optical fiber transmission systems

In long-haul frequency-division-multiplexing (FDM) lightwave transmission systems, transmission characteristics are degraded by four-wave mixing (FWM) in optical fibers. To overcome this problem in equally-spaced (ES) allocations, modified repeated unequally-spaced (RUS) allocations such as equally-spaced RUS (ERUS) and unequally-spaced RUS (URUS) allocations have been already examined.In this paper, we focus on the fact that FWM noises are closely related to modulation formats and frequency allocations. To reduce FWM noises in FDM optical fiber transmission systems, FWM noises are analyzed for ES, RUS, ERUS, and URUS with modulation formats such as non-return-to-zero (NRZ), random return-to-zero (RZ), differential phase-shift keying (DPSK), and bit-phase arranged RZ (BARZ). It is found that FWM noises are lowest in URUS with BARZ.     

Reverberation times and speech transmission indices in classrooms

Octave band reverberation times, background noise levels and speech transmission indices measurements were carried out in eighteen government subsidized primary and secondary schools in Hong Kong. Various normal classroom operation conditions were considered. Results illustrate that strong correlation exists between the reverberation times and the speech transmission indices regardless of the background noise levels and their NC values in the present study. The arithmetic average of the reverberation times in the 250 Hz to 4 Hz octave bands and the 1 kHz octave band reverberation time are found to be more important in the correlation in general. These findings provide a convenient mean for speech transmission design in classrooms.     

开放空间等离子体对微波传输影响的模拟研究

以氮气为背景气体,采用脉冲式微波产生等离子体,使用另外一束连续波作为传输模拟对象,并基于扩散效应的全域模型分析等离子体电子温度与电子密度的演化过程。实验中放电气压为300 Pa,实验结果表明：在微波脉冲开始之后极短的时间内,连续波接受信号发生剧烈衰减;而在微波脉冲结束后,连续波接受信号则缓慢恢复。微波传输主要受到等离子体电子密度的影响,而全域模型的计算结果显示等离子体电子密度在开始放电时迅速上升,甚至高于放电微波频率对应的临界密度,在放电微波脉冲结束时电子密度则缓慢下降。这说明开放空间中等离子体在失去能量维持之后,由于扩散效应占主导作用,电子密度不会迅速下降,此时连续波依然会被阻碍,直到电子密度下降到连续波频率对应的临界密度以下。     

Factors influencing the sound preference in urban open spaces

In this paper, based on a large scale survey in Europe and China as well as corresponding laboratory studies, the influencing factors on the sound preference evaluation, considering social, demographical, physical, behavioural and psychological facets, have been systematically examined based on statistical analyses for each of the 19 case study sites. Various sound types have been considered, including natural, human, mechanical and instrumental sounds. In terms of social/demographical factors, the results suggest that age and education level are two factors which universally influence the sound preference significantly, although the influence may vary with different types of urban open spaces and sounds. With increasing age or education level, people tend to prefer natural sounds and are more annoyed by mechanical sounds in general. It has also been found that gender, occupation and residence status generally would not influence the sound preference evaluation significantly, although gender has a rather strong influence for certain sound types such as bird sounds, especially at certain case study sites. In terms of physical factors (season, time of day), behavioural factors (frequency of coming to the site, reason for coming to the site), and psychological factors (site preference), generally speaking, their influence on the sound preference evaluation is insignificant, except for limited case study sites and certain sound types. The influence of home sound environment, in terms of sounds heard at home, on the sound preference has been found to be generally insignificant, except for certain sounds. It is noted that there are some correlations between social/demographical factors and the studied physical/behavioural/psychological factors, which should be taken into account when considering the influence of individual factors on sound preference.     

Sound propagation and speech transmission in a branching underground tunnel

The characteristics of sound propagation and speech transmission along a tunnel with a "T" intersection were investigated. At receivers within sight of the sound source, low frequencies were mainly attenuated around the intersection than high frequencies. At receivers out of sight of the source, high frequencies were extensively attenuated. The overall pattern of sound attenuation along the different sections of tunnel, which was calculated by the conical beam method, agreed well with the measurements in this study. Numerical calculations of reflected and diffracted waves with minimum transmission paths in a two-dimensional plane showed that reflected waves were the primary contributors to sound fields out of sight of the source. The articulation scores measured at receivers within sight of the source were high, and most of the confusion concerned syllables that could easily be misheard, even if there were a high signal-to-noise ratio. The types of syllable confusions observed at the receivers out of sight of the source appeared to have been caused by the greater deterioration in speech signals along this part of the tunnel, especially at high frequencies. The evaluation by rapid speech transmission indices (RASTI) appeared to be overestimated at the receivers out of sight of the source. Taking into account the early decay times of impulsive sound and the calculation procedures used in RASTI, it is concluded that speech intelligibility may not have been evaluated correctly by RASTI.     

Prediction of speech intelligibility for public address systems in traffic tunnels

Traffic tunnels are generally hostile acoustic environments, both in terms of reverberation and ambient noise levels. Public address (PA) systems used to convey spoken warnings must meet stringent design requirements in order to produce sufficiently intelligible speech. To be able to predict PA system performance at tunnel design time, two different speech transmission index (STI) calculation procedures were implemented. The first procedure predicts the STI based on ray-tracing simulations. Comparison with measured STI data showed that this simulation approach yields accurate intelligibility estimates. However, the procedure is time-consuming and too complex to be used by non-specialists. For this reason, a second (simpler and more efficient) procedure was developed, based on fixed non-linear regression, statistically deriving prediction functions from measured data and ray-tracing results. This procedure was compared to the approach based on ray tracing, and found to yield STI predictions closely matching those of the ray-tracing model.     

Prediction of reverberation time and speech transmission index in long enclosures

It is known that the sound field in a long space is not diffuse, and that the classic theory of room acoustics is not applicable. A theoretical model is developed for the prediction of reverberation time and speech transmission index in rectangular long enclosures, such as corridors and train stations, where the acoustic quality is important for speech. The model is based on an image-source method, and both acoustically hard and impedance boundaries are investigated. An approximate analytical solution is used to predict the frequency response of the sound field. The reverberation time is determined from the decay curve which is computed by a reverse-time integration of the squared impulse response. The angle-dependence of reflection coefficients of the boundaries and the change of phase upon reflection are incorporated in this model. Due to the relatively long distance of sound propagation, the effect of atmospheric absorption is also considered. Measurements of reverberation time and speech transmission index taken from a real tunnel, a corridor, and a model tunnel are presented. The theoretical predictions are found to agree well with the experimental data. An application of the proposed model has been suggested.     

Reduction of four-wave mixing noises in FDM optical fiber transmission systems with quaternary bit-phase arranged return-to-zero

To reduce four-wave mixing (FWM) noises in long-haul frequency-division-multiplexing optical fiber transmission systems, quaternary bit-phase arranged return-to-zero (Q-BARZ) is proposed as a modulation format, and FWM noises are analyzed by considering pulse overlapping in both time and frequency regions. It is found that FWM noises with channel frequencies are drastically reduced in Q-BARZ.     

Modification of instability processes by multiplicative noises

We study two dynamical systems submitted to white and Gaussian random noise acting multiplicatively. The first system is an imperfect pitchfork bifurcation with a noisy departure from onset. The second system is a pitchfork bifurcation in which the noise acts multiplicatively on the non-linear term of lowest order. In both cases noise suppresses some solutions that exist in the deterministic regime. Besides, for the first system, the imperfectness of the bifurcation reduces the regime of on-off intermittency. For the second system, the unstable mode can achieve a jump of finite amplitude at instability but without hysteresis. We finally identify a generic property that is verified by the stationary probability density function of the dynamical variable when a control parameter is varied.     

一维漂移空间内强流电子束的稳态传输特性

在计算了一维平板和同轴结构漂移空间的空间电荷限制流的基础上,对其中超过空间电荷限制流状态下强流电子束的稳态传输特性进行了理论分析.分析给出了确定束流稳定传输时形成虚阴极的位置和虚阴极处电子束透过率的表达式,求解了束流电子在漂移空间内的渡越时间,平板结构漂移空间内得到了通用的解析结果,同轴结构漂移空间内得到了适合一定结构参数条件下的近似结果. 关键词： 强流电子束 虚阴极 一维漂移空间 传输特性     

Acoustical characteristics of water sounds for soundscape enhancement in urban open spaces

The goal of the present study is to characterize water sounds that can be used in urban open spaces to mask road traffic noise. Sounds and visual images of a number of water features located in urban open places were obtained and subsequently analyzed in terms of psychoacoustical metrics and acoustical measures. Laboratory experiments were then conducted to investigate which water sound is appropriate for masking urban noise. The experiments consisted of two sessions: (1) Audio-only condition and (2) combined audio-visual condition. Subjective responses to stimuli were rated through the use of preference scores and 15 adjectives. The results of the experiments revealed that preference scores for the urban soundscape were affected by the acoustical characteristics of water sounds and visual images of water features; Sharpness that was used to explain the spectral envelopes of water sounds was proved to be a dominant factor for urban soundscape perception; and preferences regarding the urban soundscape were significantly related to adjectives describing "freshness" and "calmness."