Abstract
The objective of this research is to study the relationship between classroom characteristics and speech intelligibility in order to optimize the amount of acoustic treatment and its position in the room. A rectangular shaped room was modeled with the ULYSSESS acoustic analysis software. Total sound level, first reflections, the difference between direct and reflected sound, reverberation time, ALCONs, and STI were calculated. The amount of absorption treatment and its position in the room, as well as the number of people in the room, were the variables studied. Results show that the amount of absorption treatment and the number of people in the room were much more important than the position of both the absorbent materials and the students to obtain good intelligibility scores. Nevertheless, for similar intelligibility scores, overall sound level is higher when the amount of absorbent material is controlled, allowing the listeners in the rear to benefit from higher speech levels. A reduction of 78% in the area of absorbent material can be achieved while maintaining the same STI score for all the positions in the room, with an increase in overall sound level of 4–5 dB.
Published Version
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