A Masking Noise with Speech-Envelope Characteristics for Studying Intelligibility

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Abstract
A noise whose amplitude envelope followed closely that of a concomitant speech signal was generated by multiplying white noise and the amplitude envelope of the speech, permitting the signal‐to‐noise (S/N) ratio to be specified on a short‐time nonvarying basis. The spectrum of the amplitude envelope for continuous speech was studied, and the distributions of the vowel and consonant levels in articulation test materials were determined. Articulation functions in such noise and in continuous white noise were generated. Within the range of S/N ratios studied, the gains of the functions for vowels and consonants were 4% and 2.5% per decibel, respectively, in both types of noises. The results clearly depict the operational differences between conventional and envelope‐noise S/N‐ratio specification and suggest that use of the envelope‐noise masker may eliminate some of the problems associated with current methods.

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