Everyday environments impose acoustical conditions on speech communication that require interlocutors to adapt their behavior to be able to hear and to be heard. Past research has focused mainly on the adaptation of speech level, while few studies investigated how interlocutors adapt their conversational distance as a function of noise level. Similarly, no study tested the interaction between distance and speech level adaptation in noise. In the present study, participant pairs held natural conversations while binaurally listening to identical noise recordings of different realistic environments (range of 53–92 dB sound pressure level), using acoustically transparent headphones. Conversations were in standing or sitting (at a table) conditions. Interlocutor distances were tracked using wireless motion-capture equipment, which allowed subjects to move closer or farther from each other. The results show that talkers adapt their voices mainly according to the noise conditions and much less according to distance. Distance adaptation was highest in the standing condition. Consequently, mainly in the loudest environments, listeners were able to improve the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at the receiver location in the standing condition compared to the sitting condition, which became less negative. Analytical approximations are provided for the conversational distance as well as the receiver-related speech and SNR.
Skip Nav Destination
Article navigation
April 2021
April 29 2021
Conversational distance adaptation in noise and its effect on signal-to-noise ratio in realistic listening environments
Adam Weisser;
Adam Weisser
a)
1
Department of Linguistics, Australian Hearing Hub, Macquarie University
, 16 University Avenue, New South Wales 2109, Australia
Search for other works by this author on:
Kelly Miles;
Kelly Miles
b)
1
Department of Linguistics, Australian Hearing Hub, Macquarie University
, 16 University Avenue, New South Wales 2109, Australia
Search for other works by this author on:
Michael J. Richardson;
Michael J. Richardson
c)
2
Department of Psychology and Perception in Action Research Centre, Faculty of Human Sciences, Macquarie University
, Sydney, New South Wales 2109, Australia
Search for other works by this author on:
Jörg M. Buchholz
Jörg M. Buchholz
a)
1
Department of Linguistics, Australian Hearing Hub, Macquarie University
, 16 University Avenue, New South Wales 2109, Australia
Search for other works by this author on:
a)
ORCID: 0000-0003-2261-8349.
b)
ORCID: 0000-0002-4104-980X.
c)
ORCID: 0000-0001-9159-2774.
d)
Electronic mail: [email protected], ORCID: 0000-0001-6188-9761.
J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 149, 2896–2907 (2021)
Article history
Received:
June 30 2020
Accepted:
April 01 2021
Citation
Adam Weisser, Kelly Miles, Michael J. Richardson, Jörg M. Buchholz; Conversational distance adaptation in noise and its effect on signal-to-noise ratio in realistic listening environments. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 1 April 2021; 149 (4): 2896–2907. https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0004774
Download citation file:
Pay-Per-View Access
$40.00
Sign In
You could not be signed in. Please check your credentials and make sure you have an active account and try again.
Citing articles via
All we know about anechoic chambers
Michael Vorländer
A survey of sound source localization with deep learning methods
Pierre-Amaury Grumiaux, Srđan Kitić, et al.
Performance study of ray-based ocean acoustic tomography methods for estimating submesoscale variability in the upper ocean
Etienne Ollivier, Richard X. Touret, et al.