Relationship between Chinese speech intelligibility and speech transmission index in rooms using dichotic listening

Abstract

Speech intelligibility (SI) is an important index for the design and assessment of speech purpose hall. The relationship between Chinese speech intelligibility scores in rooms and speech transmission index (STI) under diotic listening condition was studied using monaural room impulse responses obtained from the room acoustical simulation software Odeon in previous paper. The present study employs the simulated binaural room impulse responses and auralization technique to obtain the subjective Chinese speech intelligibility scores using rhyme test. The relationship between Chinese speech intelligibility scores and STI is built and validated in rooms using dichotic (binaural) listening. The result shows that there is a high correlation between Chinese speech intelligibility scores and STI using dichotic listening. The relationship between Chinese speech intelligibility scores and STI under diotic and dichotic listening conditions is also analyzed. Compared with diotic listening, dichotic (binaural) listening (an actual listening situation) can improve 2.7 dB signal-to-noise ratio for Mandarin Chinese speech intelligibility. STI method can predict and evaluate the speech intelligibility for Mandarin Chinese in rooms for dichotic (binaural) listening.