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Re: A search for a good citation on the relative effects of SNR & overall level for perceiving speech in noise

Hi Stuart,

 One of the simplest demonstrations is in the classic Hawkins & Stevens paper
on the critical ratio (JASA 22, 6-13 (1950)). They had listeners ( maybe just Joe and Smitty) adjust a reading of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations" (uniformly uninteresting) to the "thresholds of audibility and of intelligibility." The SNR was independent of level over a wide range. The difference between the the 
two thresholds also remained nearly constant as I recall. There is a
nice simple graph in the paper.

    Jim

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Quoting Stuart Rosen <stuart@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:


I would be grateful for some references to work showing what we all
know to be true -- that the primary determinant of performance for
speech in noise for audiometrically normal listeners is the SNR,
depending little or not at all on overall level (at least over a
fairly wide range of moderate levels).

For those interested, this is a nice study on the extent to which
speech perception is invariant across level for a wide range of
levels:

USE OF COMFORTABLE LISTENING LEVELS IN SPEECH EXPERIMENTS
Author(s): SIMON, C
Source: JOURNAL OF THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA   Volume: 64
Issue: 3   Pages: 744-750   Published: 1978

Yours - Stuart

P.S. I hope I am not opening a can of worms here!

P.P.S. I have done some searching but cannot find anything relevant.

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