Speech Transmission Index Research Articles

Acoustic conditions for students’ engagement in active learning classrooms

Educators have developed innovative teaching strategies in order to maximize learning outcomes in classrooms. Active learning classrooms are new learning spaces that facilitate the teaching strategies with enhanced students’ engagement and collaborative discussions. Previous studies showed that the design of the space impacts on students’ achievement. However, acoustic requirements of the active learning classrooms have not been investigated yet. This paper presents, thus, the acoustic conditions of the active learning classrooms located in Montreal. The acoustical parameters such as background noise, reverberation time, and speech transmission index in unoccupied conditions and occupied noise levels during learning activities are examined. The results are compared with conventional classrooms. Since active learning classrooms are more prone to acoustic deficiencies, the results of this paper can provide a better understanding of the acoustic design requirements for these spaces.

Energetic and informational masking effects of hospital noise

The ability to understand speech in a hospital setting is limited by the overlap of speech and noise energy at the level of the cochlea, sometimes called “energetic masking.” However, there are also additional “informational masking” effects that can occur when the noise is comprised of informational sounds such as speech, alarms, or other meaningful auditory events (e.g., Kidd and Colburn, 2017). While energetic overlap has been well-studied and is quantified in a number of international standards such as the Speech Intelligibility Index (ANSI, 2004), there is no similar metric for informational masking. Two of the main difficulties with predicting informational masking, and thus the intelligibility of speech in real world environments, are 1) the lack of tools that defines the meaningfulness of an interfering sound and 2) the much greater variability in susceptibility of individual listeners to informational as opposed to energetic masking. These ideas will be illustrated with data from several recent studies of speech intelligibility with various types of maskers, including hospital noise, and several current and emerging techniques for assessing speech intelligibility for individual listeners in simulated environments will be described.

Performance improvement of monaural speech separation system using image analysis techniques

This research work proposes an image analysis-based algorithm to enhance the time–frequency (T–F) mask obtained in the initial segmentation of CASA-based monaural speech separation system to improve speech quality and intelligibility. It consists of labelling the initial segmentation mask, boundary extraction, active pixel detection and eliminating the non-active pixels related to noise. In labelling, the T–F mask obtained is labelled as periodicity pixel ( P ) matrix and non-periodicity pixel ( NP ) matrix. Next speech boundaries are created by connecting all the possible nearby P and NP matrix. Some speech boundary may include noisy T–F units as holes; these holes are treated using the proposed algorithm. The proposed algorithm is evaluated with the quality and intelligibility measures such as signal to noise ratio (SNR), perceptual evaluation of speech quality, P EL , P NR , coherence speech intelligibility index (CSII), normalised covariance metric (NCM), and short-time objective intelligibility (STOI). The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm improves the speech quality by increasing the SNR with an average value of 9.91 dB and reduces the P NR by an average value of 25.6% and also improves the speech intelligibility in terms of CSII, NCM, and STOI when compared with the input noisy speech mixture

Empirical Study of Room Acoustic Conditions and Neurophysiologic Strain in Staff Working in Special Open-Plan Bank Offices

Noise in open-plan offices induces psychological stress and fatigue in staff. Focusing on workstations and noise exposure, this study investigated acoustic conditions in special open-plan offices and their relationship with neurophysiologic strain. Twenty banks and 104 participants were randomly selected. Acoustic properties of banks and workstation partitions were assessed using the ISO criteria and speech transmission index (STI). Equivalent noise level (LAeq) of the staff was measured in three 30-min intervals, and skin conductance level (SCL) and respiratory rate (RR) of staff were assessed in three 5-min intervals at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of the work hours. The intelligibility of speech between staff workstations (SW) was better than that between staff and clients (SC however, with increasing STI between SW and with decreasing STI between S&C, the staff strain increased. With increasing noise exposure, psychological stress of the staff increased too. Because of the acoustic condition and partitions used in the banks, the acoustic comfort of staff was not desirable. Since many other banks use such partitions, any improvement in partitions between workstations can enhance acoustic comfort in the banks.

Effects of vowel context and discriminability on band independence in nonsense syllable recognition.

The Speech Intelligibility Index algorithm [(1997). ANSI S3.5-1997] models cues in disjoint frequency bands for consonants and vowels as additive, independent contributions to intelligibility. Data from other studies examining only consonants in single-vowel nonsense stimuli exhibit synergetic and redundant band contributions that challenge the band independence assumption. The present study tested the hypotheses that (a) band independence is present for multi-vowel stimuli, and (b) dependent band contributions are artifacts of confounding stimulus administration and testing methods. Data were measured in two experiments in which subjects identified filtered nonsense consonant-vowel-consonant syllables using a variety of randomly selected vowels. The measured data were used in simulations that further characterized the range of subject responses. Results of testing and simulation suggest that, where present, band independence is fostered by low broadband error, high vowel diversity, and high vowel discriminability. Synergistic band contributions were observed for confusable vowels that were most susceptible to filtering; redundant contributions were observed for the least susceptible vowels. Implications for intelligibility prediction and enhancement are discussed.

Longitudinal hearing loss in Wolfram syndrome

BackgroundWolfram syndrome (WFS) is a rare autosomal recessive disease with clinical manifestations of diabetes mellitus (DM), diabetes insipidus (DI), optic nerve atrophy (OA) and sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL). Although SNHL is a key symptom of WFS, there is limited information on its natural history using standardized measures. Such information is important for clinical care and determining its use as an outcome measure in clinical trials.MethodsStandardized audiologic measures, including pure-tone testing, tympanometry, speech perception, and the unaided Speech Intelligibility Index (SII) were assessed in patients with confirmed WFS annually. Mixed model analyses were used to examine main effects of age, time or interactions for pure tone average (PTA), high frequency average (HFA) and SII.ResultsForty WFS patients were evaluated between 1 and 6 times. Mean age at initial enrollment was 13.5 years (SD = 5.6). Patients were classified as having normal hearing (n = 10), mild-to-severe (n = 24) or profound SNHL (n = 6). Mean age of diagnosis for SNHL was 8.3 years (SD = 5.1) with 75% prevalence. HFA worsened over time for both ears, and SII worsened over time in the worse ear, with greater decline in both measures in younger patients. Average estimated change over 1 year for all measures was in the subclinical range and power analyses suggest that 100 patients would be needed per group (treatment vs. placebo) to detect a 60% reduction in annual change of HFA over 3 years. If trials focused on just those patients with SNHL, power estimates suggest 55 patients per group would be sufficient.ConclusionsMost patients had a slow progressive SNHL emerging in late childhood. Change over time with standard audiologic tests (HFA, SII) was small and would not be detectable for at least 2 years in an individual. Relatively large sample sizes would be necessary to detect significant impact on hearing progression in a clinical trial. Hearing function should be monitored clinically in WFS to provide appropriate intervention. Because SNHL can occur very early in WFS, audiologists and otolaryngologists should be aware of and refer for later emerging symptoms.

A Matrixed Speech-in-Noise Test to Discriminate Favorable Listening Conditions by Means of Intelligibility and Response Time Results.

The primary aim of this study was to develop and examine the potentials of a new speech-in-noise test in discriminating the favorable listening conditions targeted in the acoustical design of communication spaces. The test is based on the recognition and recall of disyllabic word sequences. A secondary aim was to compare the test with current speech-in-noise tests, assessing its benefits and limitations. Young adults (19-40 years old), self-reporting normal hearing, were presented with the newly developed Words Sequence Test (WST; 16 participants, Experiment 1) and with a consonant confusion test and a sentence recognition test (Experiment 2, 36 participants randomly assigned to the 2 tests). Participants performing the WST were presented with word sequences of different lengths (from 2 up to 6 words). Two listening conditions were selected: (a) no noise and no reverberation, and (b) reverberant, steady-state noise (Speech Transmission Index: 0.47). The tests were presented in a closed-set format; data on the number of words correctly recognized (speech intelligibility, IS) and the response times (RTs) were collected (onset RT, single words' RT). It was found that a sequence composed of 4 disyllabic words ensured both the full recognition score in quiet conditions and a significant decrease in IS results when noise and reverberation degraded the speech signal. RTs increased with the worsening of the listening conditions and the number of words of the sequence. The greatest onset RT variation was found when using a sequence of 4 words. In the comparison with current speech-in-noise tests, it was found that the WST maximized the IS difference between the selected listening conditions as well as the RT increase. Overall, the results suggest that the new speech-in-noise test has good potentials in discriminating conditions with near-ceiling accuracy. As compared with current speech-in-noise tests, it appears that the WST with a 4-word sequence allows for a finer mapping of the acoustical design target conditions of public spaces through accuracy and onset RT data.

Comparison of different in situ measurements techniques of intelligibility in an open-plan office

Acoustic comfort in open-plan offices is a relatively recent research topic and some practices have not yet been consolidated. The goal in these spaces is to achieve good speech privacy at every workstation, reaching a high value of spatial decay of the sound pressure level. In case of refurbishment, a proper measurement of intelligibility criteria is needed, for example, in order to properly calibrate a numerical model or to plan acoustic treatments. This work compares different measurement techniques to evaluate the spatial distribution of intelligibility criteria. In situ measurements were done in an open-plan office used as a case study. Both omnidirectional and directional sound sources with different sound power levels were used, according, respectively, to ISO 3382-3:2012 and ITU-T P.51:1996. Furthermore, compensation algorithms were used in impulse response measurements in presence of Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning noise. The study shows, in a preliminary way, how different techniques and equipment can influence intelligibility criteria used in the open-plan office characterization. Results show that the indirect method of measuring Speech Transmission Index could not be used when the background level is high as the case study while the direct method returns good results.

Fast estimation of Speech Transmission Index using the Reverberation Time: Comparison between predictive equations for educational rooms of different sizes

Ensuring a high speech intelligibility is an essential issue for educational rooms, especially in relation to the effectiveness of the student learning process. The Reverberation Time and the Speech Transmission Index are objective parameters commonly used to assess the acoustic quality of the rooms, according to their intended use. Especially the Speech Transmission Index can give interesting information about the speech intelligibility. As with the Reverberation Time, it would be very important to have simple equations aimed to the prediction of Speech Transmission Index values during the early design stage. There are different studies in the literature that propose equations, obtained on empirical basis, for a fast estimation of the Speech Transmission Index as a function of the Reverberation Time. In this paper, a comparison of the most significant equations proposed in the literature was done using the Reverberation Time and Speech Transmission Index values obtained from a measurement campaign at the School of Engineering of the University of Pisa on a sample of 11 educational rooms. The analysis was carried out for educational rooms of different sizes, in order to highlight differences in the prediction accuracy depending on the volume of the rooms. From the analysis results it was possible to highlight the equation that shows the best accuracy in predicting the experimental data for the sample of investigated rooms and propose, through a regression analysis, two new equations for the rapid estimation of the Speech Transmission Index.

Critical methodological assessment of the distraction distance used for evaluating room acoustic quality of open-plan offices

ISO 3382-3, the international standard for evaluating the acoustics of open-plan offices, includes metrics based on measuring spatial decay, over workstations, of speech sound pressure level, and speech intelligibility. The speech intelligibility metrics, out of which distraction distance (rD) has recently been shown to be most useful, are derived from speech transmission index (STI) calculations. This study examines how the ISO 3382-3 metrics, especially rD, are affected by certain aspects of STI calculation, by using acoustic measurements of 20 offices. Results show that rD values calculated using ISO 3382-3 speech spectrum were significantly different to those calculated using other standard and proposed speech spectra. The choice of standard octave-band transmission index weights, e.g., male/female, used in standard STI calculation as per IEC 60268-16 (2011), did not significantly affect rD values. However, compared to the standard STI calculation, the pre-standard weights from the STI model from 1985 that is used in some important studies cited in ISO 3382-3 yielded much shorter rD values; RASTI yielded an increase in rD of less than 1 m; whereas STIPA (IEC 60268-16: 2011) did not affect rD. The effect of auditory spectral masking in standard STI calculation was negligible overall, but there were cases where the auditory masking reduced rD by up to 0.5 m. The effects of speech spectrum on two other relevant metrics in ISO 3382-3, namely spatial decay rate of speech, and A-weighted sound pressure level of speech at 4 m distance, were not significant. Overall, sensitivities of rD to several aspects of STI calculation are highlighted, which should contribute to the interpretation of studies that informed ISO 3382-3 development, support the current implied practice of using male STI weights for genderless speech in the calculation of rD, and provide guidance on potential refinements.

Evidence-Based Occupational Hearing Screening I: Modeling the Effects of Real-World Noise Environments on the Likelihood of Effective Speech Communication.

The objectives of this study were to (1) identify essential hearing-critical job tasks for public safety and law enforcement personnel; (2) determine the locations and real-world noise environments where these tasks are performed; (3) characterize each noise environment in terms of its impact on the likelihood of effective speech communication, considering the effects of different levels of vocal effort, communication distances, and repetition; and (4) use this characterization to define an objective normative reference for evaluating the ability of individuals to perform essential hearing-critical job tasks in noisy real-world environments. Data from five occupational hearing studies performed over a 17-year period for various public safety agencies were analyzed. In each study, job task analyses by job content experts identified essential hearing-critical tasks and the real-world noise environments where these tasks are performed. These environments were visited, and calibrated recordings of each noise environment were made. The extended speech intelligibility index (ESII) was calculated for each 4-sec interval in each recording. These data, together with the estimated ESII value required for effective speech communication by individuals with normal hearing, allowed the likelihood of effective speech communication in each noise environment for different levels of vocal effort and communication distances to be determined. These likelihoods provide an objective norm-referenced and standardized means of characterizing the predicted impact of real-world noise on the ability to perform essential hearing-critical tasks. A total of 16 noise environments for law enforcement personnel and eight noise environments for corrections personnel were analyzed. Effective speech communication was essential to hearing-critical tasks performed in these environments. Average noise levels, ranged from approximately 70 to 87 dBA in law enforcement environments and 64 to 80 dBA in corrections environments. The likelihood of effective speech communication at communication distances of 0.5 and 1 m was often less than 0.50 for normal vocal effort. Likelihood values often increased to 0.80 or more when raised or loud vocal effort was used. Effective speech communication at and beyond 5 m was often unlikely, regardless of vocal effort. ESII modeling of nonstationary real-world noise environments may prove an objective means of characterizing their impact on the likelihood of effective speech communication. The normative reference provided by these measures predicts the extent to which hearing impairments that increase the ESII value required for effective speech communication also decrease the likelihood of effective speech communication. These predictions may provide an objective evidence-based link between the essential hearing-critical job task requirements of public safety and law enforcement personnel and ESII-based hearing assessment of individuals who seek to perform these jobs.

Relations Between Self-Reported Daily-Life Fatigue, Hearing Status, and Pupil Dilation During a Speech Perception in Noise Task.

People with hearing impairment are likely to experience higher levels of fatigue because of effortful listening in daily communication. This hearing-related fatigue might not only constrain their work performance but also result in withdrawal from major social roles. Therefore, it is important to understand the relationships between fatigue, listening effort, and hearing impairment by examining the evidence from both subjective and objective measurements. The aim of the present study was to investigate these relationships by assessing subjectively measured daily-life fatigue (self-report questionnaires) and objectively measured listening effort (pupillometry) in both normally hearing and hearing-impaired participants. Twenty-seven normally hearing and 19 age-matched participants with hearing impairment were included in this study. Two self-report fatigue questionnaires Need For Recovery and Checklist Individual Strength were given to the participants before the test session to evaluate the subjectively measured daily fatigue. Participants were asked to perform a speech reception threshold test with single-talker masker targeting a 50% correct response criterion. The pupil diameter was recorded during the speech processing, and we used peak pupil dilation (PPD) as the main outcome measure of the pupillometry. No correlation was found between subjectively measured fatigue and hearing acuity, nor was a group difference found between the normally hearing and the hearing-impaired participants on the fatigue scores. A significant negative correlation was found between self-reported fatigue and PPD. A similar correlation was also found between Speech Intelligibility Index required for 50% correct and PPD. Multiple regression analysis showed that factors representing "hearing acuity" and "self-reported fatigue" had equal and independent associations with the PPD during the speech in noise test. Less fatigue and better hearing acuity were associated with a larger pupil dilation. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the relationship between a subjective measure of daily-life fatigue and an objective measure of pupil dilation, as an indicator of listening effort. These findings help to provide an empirical link between pupil responses, as observed in the laboratory, and daily-life fatigue.

Evidence-based occupational hearing screening II: validation of a screening methodology using measures of functional hearing ability

Objective: Validate use of the Extended Speech Intelligibility Index (ESII) for prediction of speech intelligibility in non-stationary real-world noise environments. Define a means of using these predictions for objective occupational hearing screening for hearing-critical public safety and law enforcement jobs. Design: Analyses of predicted and measured speech intelligibility in recordings of real-world noise environments were performed in two studies using speech recognition thresholds (SRTs) and intelligibility measures. ESII analyses of the recordings were used to predict intelligibility. Noise recordings were made in prison environments and at US Army facilities for training ground and airborne forces. Speech materials included full bandwidth sentences and bandpass filtered sentences that simulated radio transmissions. Study sample: A total of 22 adults with normal hearing (NH) and 15 with mild–moderate hearing impairment (HI) participated in the two studies. Results: Average intelligibility predictions for individual NH and HI subjects were accurate in both studies (r2 ≥ 0.94). Pooled predictions were slightly less accurate (0.78 ≤ r2 ≤ 0.92). Conclusions: An individual’s SRT and audiogram can accurately predict the likelihood of effective speech communication in noise environments with known ESII characteristics, where essential hearing-critical tasks are performed. These predictions provide an objective means of occupational hearing screening.

Acoustic Quality Levels of Mosques in Batu Pahat

Every Friday, Muslims has been required to perform a special prayer known as the Friday prayers which involve the delivery of a brief lecture (Khutbah). Speech intelligibility in oral communications presented by the preacher affected all the congregation and determined the level of acoustic quality in the interior of the mosque. Therefore, this study intended to assess the level of acoustic quality of three public mosques in Batu Pahat. Good acoustic quality is essential in contributing towards appreciation in prayers and increasing khusyu’ during the worship, which is closely related to the speech intelligibility corresponding to the actual function of the mosque according to Islam. Acoustic parameters measured includes noise criteria (NC), reverberation time (RT) and speech transmission index (STI), and was performed using the sound level meter and sound measurement instruments. This test is carried out through the physical observation with the consideration of space and volume design as a factor affecting acoustic parameters. Results from all 3 mosques as the showed that the acoustic quality level inside these buildings are slightly poor which is at below 0.45 coefficients based on the standard. Among the factors that influencing the low acoustical quality are location, building materials, installation of sound absorption material and the number of occupants inside the mosque. As conclusion, the acoustic quality level of a mosque is highly depends on physical factors of the mosque such as the architectural design and space volume besides other factors as been identified by this study.

An investigation of acoustical environments in the elderly care facilities

62 rooms including living rooms, common rooms and dining rooms in 11 elderly care facilities had been measured, and some objective acoustical parameters in these rooms were measured such as background noise level (BNL) and reverberation time (RT). The range of BNL in 62 rooms was from 26.8 dBA to 67.2 dBA, and the mean BNL was 41.3 dBA and the standard deviation (SD) was 10.1 dBA. In these rooms, the averaged BNL in the living rooms was lower than those in the common rooms and the dining rooms, while the dining rooms had the highest averaged BNL. The RT in 500–4000 Hz octave bands, early-to-late sound ratio (C50) in 500–4000 Hz octave bands and speech transmission index (STI) in these rooms were 0.36–1.86 s, −4.48 to 9.67 dB and 0.47–0.81, respectively. Their mean values were 0.94 s, 1.73 dB and 0.64, and the SD were 0.40 s, 3.09 dB and 0.09, respectively. For all these measured rooms, the living room had a relatively short RT with a good speech intelligibility, while the dining room had a long RT with a fair speech intelligibility. To provide the elderly people with a good speech communication environment, some sound absorption and insulation treatment measures should be taken for the long RT and high BNL in the rooms of the elderly care facilities to reduce the BNL and RT and improve the speech intelligibility in these rooms.

Acoustic conditions in open plan office - Application of technical measures in a typical room

Noise in open plan offices should not exceed acceptable levels for the hearing protection. Its major negative effects on employees are nuisance and impediment in execution of work. Specific technical solutions should be introduced to provide proper acoustic conditions for work performance. Acoustic evaluation of a typical open plan office was presented in the article published in "Medycyna Pracy" 5/2016. None of the rooms meets all the criteria, therefore, in this article one of the rooms was chosen to apply different technical solutions to check the possibility of reaching proper acoustic conditions. Acoustic effectiveness of those solutions was verified by means of digital simulation. The model was checked by comparing the results of measurements and calculations before using simulation. The analyzis revealed that open plan offices supplemented with signals for masking speech signals can meet all the required criteria. It is relatively easy to reach proper reverberation time (i.e., sound absorption). It is more difficult to reach proper values of evaluation parameters determined from A-weighted sound pressure level (SPLA) of speech. The most difficult is to provide proper values of evaluation parameters determined from speech transmission index (STI). Finally, it is necessary (besides acoustic treatment) to use devices for speech masking. The study proved that it is technically possible to reach proper acoustic condition. Main causes of employees complaints in open plan office are inadequate acoustic work conditions. Therefore, it is necessary to apply specific technical solutions - not only sound absorbing suspended ceiling and high acoustic barriers, but also devices for speech masking. Med Pr 2018;69(2):153-165.

SII—Speech intelligibility index standard: ANSI S3.5 1997

The Speech Intelligibility Index Standard (SII) defines a method for computing a physical measure that is highly correlated with the intelligibility of speech. The SII is calculated from acoustical measurements of speech and noise. In this talk the activities of the Working Group for the Speech Intelligibility Standard will be reviewed including the issues to be resolved, the changes, and the additions under consideration. The general framework of the current standard (ANSI S3.5-1997) is such that new methodologies for specifying the effective (“equivalent”) speech and noise can be easily incorporated as long as they have been tested and found valid for a well specified set of circumstances. The history of the Speech Intelligibility Index (SII) Standard and its relationship to the Articulation Index (AI) and the Speech Transmission Index(STI) will also reviewed. The general philosophy of Speech Intelligibility Index will also be discussed including the definition and specification of its fundamental variables: dynamic speech and noise spectra, information transmission by different bands, and their biologic/evolutionary compatibility with both the threshold of hearing, and the neural tuning.

Band importance functions of listeners with sensorineural hearing impairment

The Speech Intelligibility Index (SII) includes a series of band importance functions for calculating the estimated intelligibility of speech under various conditions. Band importance functions describe the relative contribution of discrete spectral regions of speech to overall speech intelligibility. They are generally measured by filtering the spectrum into a series of frequency bands and determining intelligibility when each band is present, relative to intelligibility when other bands are present. The functions found in the SII are commonly used to provide estimations of intelligibility for listeners with hearing loss, even though they were developed with the use of normal-hearing listeners. In the current study, band importance functions were derived for individual listeners with sensorineural hearing impairment and a group of normal-hearing control participants. Functions were measured by filtering sentences to contain only random subsets of bands on each trial, and regressing speech recognition against the presence or absence of each band across trials. Preliminary results indicate that the shape of hearing loss plays an important role in the shape of band importance functions, with some listeners who have high-frequency sloping losses displaying decreased and even negative importance of high-frequency speech bands.

Cognitive disruption by noise-vocoded speech stimuli: Effects of spectral variation.

The effect of irrelevant sounds on short-term memory was investigated in two experiments using noise-vocoded speech stimuli (NVSS). Speech samples were systematically modified by a noise-vocoder and a set of stimuli varying from amplitude-modulated white noise to intelligible speech was created. Eight NVSS conditions, composed of 1-, 2-, 4-, 6-, 9-, 12-, 15-, and 18-bands, were used as the distracting stimuli in a digit-recall task next to the speech and silence conditions. The results showed that performance decreased with the number of frequency bands up to the 6-bands condition, but there was no influence of number of bands on performance beyond six bands. The results were analyzed using four acoustic metrics proposed in the literature: the frequency domain correlation coefficient (FDCC), the fluctuation strength, the speech transmission index (STI), and the normalized covariance measure (NCM). None of the metrics successfully predicted the results. However, the parameter values of the FDCC, the STI, and the NCM indicated that a prediction model for irrelevant sound effect should account for both temporal and spectral features of the irrelevant sounds.

Soundscape elaboration from anthrophonic adaptation of community noise

Under the situation of an urban environment, noise has been a critical issue in affecting the indoor environment. A reliable approach is required for evaluation of the community noise as one factor of anthrophonic in the urban environment. This research investigates the level of noise exposure from different community noise sources and elaborates the advantage of the noise disadvantages for soundscape innovation. Integrated building element design as a protector for noise control and speech intelligibility compliance using field experiment and MATLAB programming and modeling are also carried out. Meanwhile, for simulation analysis and building acoustic optimization, Sound Reduction-Speech Intelligibility and Reverberation Time are the main parameters for identifying tropical building model as case study object. The results show that the noise control should consider its integration with the other critical issue, thermal control, in an urban environment. The 1.1 second of reverberation time for speech activities and noise reduction more than 28.66 dBA for critical frequency (20 Hz), the speech intelligibility index could be reached more than fair assessment, 0.45. Furthermore, the environmental psychology adaptation result “Close The Opening” as the best method in high noise condition and personal adjustment as the easiest and the most adaptable way.