Measures for assessing architectural speech security (privacy) of closed offices and meeting rooms

From National Research Council Canada

Download	View accepted manuscript: Measures for assessing architectural speech security (privacy) of closed offices and meeting rooms (PDF, 4.4 MiB)
DOI	Resolve DOI: https://doi.org/10.1121/1.1810300
Author	Search for: Gover, B. N.¹; Search for: Bradley, J. S.¹
Affiliation	National Research Council of Canada. NRC Institute for Research in Construction
Format	Text, Article
Subject	speech privacy; security; intelligibility; sound transmission; Speech security
Abstract	Objective measures were investigated as predictors of the speech security of closed offices and rooms. A new signal-to-noise type measure is shown to be a superior indicator for security than existing measures such as the Articulation Index, the Speech Intelligibility Index, the ratio of the loudness of speech to that of noise, and the A-weighted level difference of speech and noise. This new measure is a weighted sum of clipped one-third-octave-band signal-to-noise ratios; various weightings and clipping levels are explored. Listening tests had 19 subjects rate the audibility and intelligibility of 500 English sentences, filtered to simulate transmission through various wall constructions, and presented along with background noise. The results of the tests indicate that the new measure is highly correlated with sentence intelligibility scores and also with three security thresholds: the threshold of intelligibility (below which speech is unintelligible), the threshold of cadence (below which the cadence of speech is inaudible), and the threshold of audibility (below which speech is inaudible). The ratio of the loudness of speech to that of noise, and simple A-weighted level differences are both shown to be well correlated with these latter two thresholds (cadence and audibility), but not well correlated with intelligibility.
Publication date	2004-12-01
In	Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 116, no. December 6 (1 December 2004): 3480–3490.
Language	English
Peer reviewed	Yes
NRC number	NRCC 47039 NRC-IRC-16302
NPARC number	20377017
Export citation	Export as RIS
Report a correction	Report a correction (opens in a new tab)
Record identifier	0645818d-4e98-4e22-bd68-51a4d6ad8238
Record created	2012-07-24
Record modified	2020-04-17

Date modified:: 2024-04-19