Subject: Re: A search for a good citation on the relative effects of SNR & overall level for perceiving speech in noise From: "James D. Miller" <jamdmill@xxxxxxxx> Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2008 14:08:46 -0400 List-Archive:<http://lists.mcgill.ca/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=AUDITORY>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 -- James D. Miller, Ph.D. Principal Scientist Communication Disorders Technology, Inc. Indiana University Research Park 501 N. Morton Street Suite 215 Bloomington, IN 47404 Business Phone: (812)336-1766 Cingular Cell Phone: (812)360-0612 Quoting Stuart Rosen <stuart@xxxxxxxx>: > 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. > > -- > /*------------------------------------------------*/ > Stuart Rosen, PhD > Professor of Speech and Hearing Science > Speech, Hearing and Phonetic Sciences > Division of Psychology & Language Sciences, UCL > 2 Wakefield Street > London WC1N 1PF > England > > Tel: (+ 44 [0]20) 7679 4077 > Admin: (+ 44 [0]20) 7679 4050 > Fax: (+ 44 [0]20) 7679 4010 > > Email: stuart@xxxxxxxx > > Home page: http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/stuart > /*------------------------------------------------*/ >