Binaural speech intelligibility through personal and non-personal HRTF via headphones, with added artificial noise and reverberation

Publication date: Available online 1 November 2018Source: Speech CommunicationAuthor(s): Felipe Orduña-Bustamante, A.L. Padilla-Ortiz, Edgar A. Torres-GallegosAbstractSubjective intelligibility tests were carried out by processing speech through personal and non-personal Head-Related Transfer Functions (HRTF) for azimuth angle θ=+30∘ (sound source to the right), presented through headphones, under simulated adverse listening conditions. Tests with noise disturbance were also conducted at azimuth angles of θ=0∘, 15° and 45°. Phonetically balanced bi-syllable words in Spanish, uttered by a mexican female speaker, were used as speech material. Stimuli were convolved with personal or non-personal HRTF, and artificially contaminated with noise or reverberation, interaurally correlated or uncorrelated at the left and right ears. Results at θ=30∘ show that binaural speech intelligibility scores reduce slightly to moderately with non-personal HRTF, compared to personal HRTF, for these types of acoustic disturbance. Average intelligibility score reductions of ΔI=−7.6%, and −12.1%, were found statistically significant, p(Δ I ≠ 0) > 0.99, respectively for interaurally correlated and uncorrelated noise. Reductions of intelligibility with reverberation were found smaller: −1.9%,p=0.63, and −4.1%,p > 0.99, respectively for interaurally correlated and uncorrelated reverberation, the reduction being smaller, and statistically less significant for interau...
Source: Speech Communication - Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research