Speech segregation in rooms: monaural, binaural, and interacting effects of reverberation on target and interferer

Speech reception thresholds were measured in virtual rooms to investigate the influence of reverberation on speech intelligibility for spatially separated targets and interferers. The measurements were realized under headphones, using target sentences and noise or two-voice interferers. The room simulation allowed variation of the absorption coefficient of the room surfaces independently for target and interferer. The direct-to-reverberant ratio and interaural coherence of sources were also varied independently by considering binaural and diotic listening. The main effect of reverberation on the interferer was binaural and mediated by the coherence, in agreement with binaural unmasking theories. It appeared at lower reverberation levels than the effect of reverberation on the target, which was mainly monaural and associated with the direct-to-reverberant ratio, and could be explained by the loss of amplitude modulation in the reverberant speech signals. This effect was slightly smaller when listening binaurally. Reverberation might also be responsible for a disruption of the mechanism by which the auditory system exploits fundamental frequency differences to segregate competing voices, and a disruption of the "listening in the gaps" associated with speech interferers. These disruptions may explain an interaction observed between the effects of reverberation on the targets and two-voice interferers.     

Perceptual validation of virtual room acoustics: Sound localisation and speech understanding

The reliability of algorithms for room acoustic simulations has often been confirmed on the basis of the verification of predicted room acoustical parameters. This paper presents a complementary perceptual validation procedure consisting of two experiments, respectively dealing with speech intelligibility, and with sound source front–back localisation.The evaluated simulation algorithm, implemented in software ODEON®, is a hybrid method that is based on an image source algorithm for the prediction of early sound reflection and on ray-tracing for the later part, using a stochastic scattering process with secondary sources. The binaural room impulse response (BRIR) is calculated from a simulated room impulse response where information about the arriving time, intensity and spatial direction of each sound reflection is collected and convolved with a measured Head Related Transfer Function (HRTF). The listening stimuli for the speech intelligibility and localisation tests are auralised convolutions of anechoic sound samples with measured and simulated BRIRs.Perception tests were performed with human subjects in two acoustical environments, i.e. an anechoic and reverberant room, by presenting the stimuli to subjects in a natural way, and via headphones by using two non-individualized HRTFs (artificial head and hearing aids placed on the ears of the artificial head) of both a simulated and a real room.Very good correspondence is found between the results obtained with simulated and measured BRIRs, both for speech intelligibility in the presence of noise and for sound source localisation tests. In the anechoic room an increase in speech intelligibility is observed when noise and signal are presented from sources located at different angles. This improvement is not so evident in the reverberant room, with the sound sources at 1-m distance from the listener. Interestingly, the performance of people for front–back localisation is better in the reverberant room than in the anechoic room.The correlation between people’s ability for sound source localisation on one hand, and their ability for recognition of binaurally received speech in reverberation on the other hand, is found to be weak.     

The impact of reverberant self-masking and overlap-masking effects on speech intelligibility by cochlear implant listeners (L)

The purpose of this study is to determine the relative impact of reverberant self-masking and overlap-masking effects on speech intelligibility by cochlear implant listeners. Sentences were presented in two conditions wherein reverberant consonant segments were replaced with clean consonants, and in another condition wherein reverberant vowel segments were replaced with clean vowels. The underlying assumption is that self-masking effects would dominate in the first condition, whereas overlap-masking effects would dominate in the second condition. Results indicated that the degradation of speech intelligibility in reverberant conditions is caused primarily by self-masking effects that give rise to flattened formant transitions.     

Prediction of the influence of reverberation on binaural speech intelligibility in noise and in quiet

Reverberation usually degrades speech intelligibility for spatially separated speech and noise sources since spatial unmasking is reduced and late reflections decrease the fidelity of the received speech signal. The latter effect could not satisfactorily be predicted by a recently presented binaural speech intelligibility model [Beutelmann et al. (2010). J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 127, 2479-2497]. This study therefore evaluated three extensions of the model to improve its predictions: (1) an extension of the speech intelligibility index based on modulation transfer functions, (2) a correction factor based on the room acoustical quantity "definition," and (3) a separation of the speech signal into useful and detrimental parts. The predictions were compared to results of two experiments in which speech reception thresholds were measured in a reverberant room in quiet and in the presence of a noise source for listeners with normal hearing. All extensions yielded better predictions than the original model when the influence of reverberation was strong, while predictions were similar for conditions with less reverberation. Although model (3) differed substantially in the assumed interaction of binaural processing and early reflections, its predictions were very similar to model (2) that achieved the best fit to the data.     

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.     

Binaural prediction of speech intelligibility in reverberant rooms with multiple noise sources

When speech is in competition with interfering sources in rooms, monaural indicators of intelligibility fail to take account of the listener's abilities to separate target speech from interfering sounds using the binaural system. In order to incorporate these segregation abilities and their susceptibility to reverberation, Lavandier and Culling [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 127, 387-399 (2010)] proposed a model which combines effects of better-ear listening and binaural unmasking. A computationally efficient version of this model is evaluated here under more realistic conditions that include head shadow, multiple stationary noise sources, and real-room acoustics. Three experiments are presented in which speech reception thresholds were measured in the presence of one to three interferers using real-room listening over headphones, simulated by convolving anechoic stimuli with binaural room impulse-responses measured with dummy-head transducers in five rooms. Without fitting any parameter of the model, there was close correspondence between measured and predicted differences in threshold across all tested conditions. The model's components of better-ear listening and binaural unmasking were validated both in isolation and in combination. The computational efficiency of this prediction method allows the generation of complex "intelligibility maps" from room designs.     

Binaural intelligibility prediction based on the speech transmission index

Although the speech transmission index (STI) is a well-accepted and standardized method for objective prediction of speech intelligibility in a wide range of environments and applications, it is essentially a monaural model. Advantages of binaural hearing in speech intelligibility are disregarded. In specific conditions, this leads to considerable mismatches between subjective intelligibility and the STI. A binaural version of the STI was developed based on interaural cross correlograms, which shows a considerably improved correspondence with subjective intelligibility in dichotic listening conditions. The new binaural STI is designed to be a relatively simple model, which adds only few parameters to the original standardized STI and changes none of the existing model parameters. For monaural conditions, the outcome is identical to the standardized STI. The new model was validated on a set of 39 dichotic listening conditions, featuring anechoic, classroom, listening room, and strongly echoic environments. For these 39 conditions, speech intelligibility [consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) word score] and binaural STI were measured. On the basis of these conditions, the relation between binaural STI and CVC word scores closely matches the STI reference curve (standardized relation between STI and CVC word score) for monaural listening. A better-ear STI appears to perform quite well in relation to the binaural STI model; the monaural STI performs poorly in these cases.     

Speech segregation in rooms: effects of reverberation on both target and interferer

Speech reception thresholds were measured to investigate the influence of a room on speech segregation between a spatially separated target and interferer. The listening tests were realized under headphones. A room simulation allowed selected positioning of the interferer and target, as well as varying the absorption coefficient of the room internal surfaces. The measurements involved target sentences and speech-shaped noise or 2-voice interferers. Four experiments revealed that speech segregation in rooms was not only dependent on the azimuth separation of sound sources, but also on their direct-to-reverberant energy ratio at the listening position. This parameter was varied for interferer and target independently. Speech intelligibility decreased as the direct-to-reverberant ratio of sources was degraded by sound reflections in the room. The influence of the direct-to-reverberant ratio of the interferer was in agreement with binaural unmasking theories, through its effect on interaural coherence. The effect on the target occurred at higher levels of reverberation and was explained by the intrinsic degradation of speech intelligibility in reverberation.     

Improving syllable identification by a preprocessing method reducing overlap-masking in reverberant environments

Overlap-masking degrades speech intelligibility in reverberation [R. H. Bolt and A. D. MacDonald, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 21(6), 577-580 (1949)]. To reduce the effect of this degradation, steady-state suppression has been proposed as a preprocessing technique [Arai et al., Proc. Autumn Meet. Acoust. Soc. Jpn., 2001; Acoust. Sci. Tech. 23(8), 229-232 (2002)]. This technique automatically suppresses steady-state portions of speech that have more energy but are less crucial for speech perception. The present paper explores the effect of steady-state suppression on syllable identification preceded by /a/ under various reverberant conditions. In each of two perception experiments, stimuli were presented to 22 subjects with normal hearing. The stimuli consisted of mono-syllables in a carrier phrase with and without steady-state suppression and were presented under different reverberant conditions using artificial impulse responses. The results indicate that steady-state suppression statistically improves consonant identification for reverberation times of 0.7 to 1.2 s. Analysis of confusion matrices shows that identification of voiced consonants, stop and nasal consonants, and bilabial, alveolar, and velar consonants were especially improved by steady-state suppression. The steady-state suppression is demonstrated to be an effective preprocessing method for improving syllable identification by reducing the effect of overlap-masking under specific reverberant conditions.     

Multi-microphone adaptive noise reduction strategies for coordinated stimulation in bilateral cochlear implant devices

Bilateral cochlear implant (BI-CI) recipients achieve high word recognition scores in quiet listening conditions. Still, there is a substantial drop in speech recognition performance when there is reverberation and more than one interferers. BI-CI users utilize information from just two directional microphones placed on opposite sides of the head in a so-called independent stimulation mode. To enhance the ability of BI-CI users to communicate in noise, the use of two computationally inexpensive multi-microphone adaptive noise reduction strategies exploiting information simultaneously collected by the microphones associated with two behind-the-ear (BTE) processors (one per ear) is proposed. To this end, as many as four microphones are employed (two omni-directional and two directional) in each of the two BTE processors (one per ear). In the proposed two-microphone binaural strategies, all four microphones (two behind each ear) are being used in a coordinated stimulation mode. The hypothesis is that such strategies combine spatial information from all microphones to form a better representation of the target than that made available with only a single input. Speech intelligibility is assessed in BI-CI listeners using IEEE sentences corrupted by up to three steady speech-shaped noise sources. Results indicate that multi-microphone strategies improve speech understanding in single- and multi-noise source scenarios.     

Comparing the effects of reverberation and of noise on speech recognition in simulated electric-acoustic listening

Cochlear implant users report difficulty understanding speech in both noisy and reverberant environments. Electric-acoustic stimulation (EAS) is known to improve speech intelligibility in noise. However, little is known about the potential benefits of EAS in reverberation, or about how such benefits relate to those observed in noise. The present study used EAS simulations to examine these questions. Sentences were convolved with impulse responses from a model of a room whose estimated reverberation times were varied from 0 to 1 sec. These reverberated stimuli were then vocoded to simulate electric stimulation, or presented as a combination of vocoder plus low-pass filtered speech to simulate EAS. Monaural sentence recognition scores were measured in two conditions: reverberated speech and speech in a reverberated noise. The long-term spectrum and amplitude modulations of the noise were equated to the reverberant energy, allowing a comparison of the effects of the interferer (speech vs noise). Results indicate that, at least in simulation, (1) EAS provides significant benefit in reverberation; (2) the benefits of EAS in reverberation may be underestimated by those in a comparable noise; and (3) the EAS benefit in reverberation likely arises from partially preserved cues in this background accessible via the low-frequency acoustic component.     

Binaural segregation in multisource reverberant environments

In a natural environment, speech signals are degraded by both reverberation and concurrent noise sources. While human listening is robust under these conditions using only two ears, current two-microphone algorithms perform poorly. The psychological process of figure-ground segregation suggests that the target signal is perceived as a foreground while the remaining stimuli are perceived as a background. Accordingly, the goal is to estimate an ideal time-frequency (T-F) binary mask, which selects the target if it is stronger than the interference in a local T-F unit. In this paper, a binaural segregation system that extracts the reverberant target signal from multisource reverberant mixtures by utilizing only the location information of target source is proposed. The proposed system combines target cancellation through adaptive filtering and a binary decision rule to estimate the ideal T-F binary mask. The main observation in this work is that the target attenuation in a T-F unit resulting from adaptive filtering is correlated with the relative strength of target to mixture. A comprehensive evaluation shows that the proposed system results in large SNR gains. In addition, comparisons using SNR as well as automatic speech recognition measures show that this system outperforms standard two-microphone beamforming approaches and a recent binaural processor.     

Measurements of binaural echo suppression

The notion of binaural echo suppression that has persisted through the years states that when listening binaurally, the effects of reverberation (spectral modulation or coloration) are less noticeable than when listening with one ear only. This idea was tested in the present study by measuring thresholds for detection of an echo of a diotic noise masker with the echo presented with either a zero or a 500-musec interaural delay. With echo delays less than 5-10 msec, thresholds for the diotic echo were about 10 dB lower than for the dichotic signal, a finding opposite that of the usual binaural masking-level difference but consistent with the notion of binaural echo suppression. Additional echo-threshold measurements were made with echoes of interaurally reversed polarity, producing out-of-phase spectral modulations. The 10-15 dB increase in thresholds for the reverse-polarity echo, over those for the same-polarity echo, indicated that the apparent "hollowness" associated with spectral modulations can be partially canceled centrally. Overall, the results of this study are consistent with a model in which: (1) the monaural representations of spectral magnitude are nonlinearly compressed prior to being combined centrally; and (2) neither monaural channel can be isolated in order to perform the detection task.     

The benefit of binaural hearing in a cocktail party: effect of location and type of interferer

The "cocktail party problem" was studied using virtual stimuli whose spatial locations were generated using anechoic head-related impulse responses from the AUDIS database [Blauert et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 103, 3082 (1998)]. Speech reception thresholds (SRTs) were measured for Harvard IEEE sentences presented from the front in the presence of one, two, or three interfering sources. Four types of interferer were used: (1) other sentences spoken by the same talker, (2) time-reversed sentences of the same talker, (3) speech-spectrum shaped noise, and (4) speech-spectrum shaped noise, modulated by the temporal envelope of the sentences. Each interferer was matched to the spectrum of the target talker. Interferers were placed in several spatial configurations, either coincident with or separated from the target. Binaural advantage was derived by subtracting SRTs from listening with the "better monaural ear" from those for binaural listening. For a single interferer, there was a binaural advantage of 2-4 dB for all interferer types. For two or three interferers, the advantage was 2-4 dB for noise and speech-modulated noise, and 6-7 dB for speech and time-reversed speech. These data suggest that the benefit of binaural hearing for speech intelligibility is especially pronounced when there are multiple voiced interferers at different locations from the target, regardless of spatial configuration; measurements with fewer or with other types of interferers can underestimate this benefit.     

Phonemic restoration effect reversed in a reverberant room

Classic demonstrations of the phonemic restoration effect show increased intelligibility of interrupted speech when the interruptions are caused by a plausible masking sound rather than by silent periods. Previous studies of this effect have been conducted exclusively under anechoic or nearly anechoic listening conditions. This study demonstrates that the effect is reversed when sounds are presented in a realistically simulated reverberant room (broadband T(60) = 1.1 s): intelligibility is greater for silent interruptions than for interruptions by unmodulated noise. Additional results suggest that the reversal is primarily due to filling silent intervals with reverberant energy from the speech signal.     

Binaural loudness summation for speech presented via earphones and loudspeaker with and without visual cues

Preliminary data [M. Epstein and M. Florentine, Ear. Hear. 30, 234-237 (2009)] obtained using speech stimuli from a visually present talker heard via loudspeakers in a sound-attenuating chamber indicate little difference in loudness when listening with one or two ears (i.e., significantly reduced binaural loudness summation, BLS), which is known as "binaural loudness constancy." These data challenge current understanding drawn from laboratory measurements that indicate a tone presented binaurally is louder than the same tone presented monaurally. Twelve normal listeners were presented recorded spondees, monaurally and binaurally across a wide range of levels via earphones and a loudspeaker with and without visual cues. Statistical analyses of binaural-to-monaural ratios of magnitude estimates indicate that the amount of BLS is significantly less for speech presented via a loudspeaker with visual cues than for stimuli with any other combination of test parameters (i.e., speech presented via earphones or a loudspeaker without visual cues, and speech presented via earphones with visual cues). These results indicate that the loudness of a visually present talker in daily environments is little affected by switching between binaural and monaural listening. This supports the phenomenon of binaural loudness constancy and underscores the importance of ecological validity in loudness research.     

Monaural and interaural intensity discrimination: level effects and the "binaural advantage"

This study examined whether the level effects seen in monaural intensity discrimination (Weber's law and the "near miss") in a two-interval task are also observed in discrimination of interaural intensity differences (IIDs) in a single-interval task. Both tasks were performed for various standard levels of 4-kHz pure tones and broadband noise. The Weber functions (10 log deltaI/I versus I in dB) in the monaural and binaural conditions were parallel. For noise, the Weber functions had slopes close to zero (Weber's law) while the Weber functions for the tones had a mean slope of -0.089 (near miss). The near miss for the monaural and binaural tasks with tones was eliminated when a high-pass masker was gated with the listening intervals. The near-miss was also observed for 250- and 1000-Hz tones in the binaural task despite overall decreased sensitivity to changes in IID at 1000 Hz. The binaural thresholds showed a small (about 2-dB) advantage over monaural thresholds only in the broadband noise conditions. More important, however, is the fact that the level effects seen monaurally are also seen binaurally. This suggests that the basic mechanisms responsible for Weber's law and the near miss are common to monaural and binaural processing.     

Evaluation of speech transmission in open public spaces affected by combined noises

In the present study, the effects of interference from combined noises on speech transmission were investigated in a simulated open public space. Sound fields for dominant noises were predicted using a typical urban square model surrounded by buildings. Then road traffic noise and two types of construction noises, corresponding to stationary and impulsive noises, were selected as background noises. Listening tests were performed on a group of adults, and the quality of speech transmission was evaluated using listening difficulty as well as intelligibility scores. During the listening tests, two factors that affect speech transmission performance were considered: (1) temporal characteristics of construction noise (stationary or impulsive) and (2) the levels of the construction and road traffic noises. The results indicated that word intelligibility scores and listening difficulty ratings were affected by the temporal characteristics of construction noise due to fluctuations in the background noise level. It was also observed that listening difficulty is unable to describe the speech transmission in noisy open public spaces showing larger variation than did word intelligibility scores.     

Intelligibility of reverberant noisy speech with ideal binary masking

For a mixture of target speech and noise in anechoic conditions, the ideal binary mask is defined as follows: It selects the time-frequency units where target energy exceeds noise energy by a certain local threshold and cancels the other units. In this study, the definition of the ideal binary mask is extended to reverberant conditions. Given the division between early and late reflections in terms of speech intelligibility, three ideal binary masks can be defined: an ideal binary mask that uses the direct path of the target as the desired signal, an ideal binary mask that uses the direct path and early reflections of the target as the desired signal, and an ideal binary mask that uses the reverberant target as the desired signal. The effects of these ideal binary mask definitions on speech intelligibility are compared across two types of interference: speech shaped noise and concurrent female speech. As suggested by psychoacoustical studies, the ideal binary mask based on the direct path and early reflections of target speech outperforms the other masks as reverberation time increases and produces substantial reductions in terms of speech reception threshold for normal hearing listeners.