Modelling listener distraction resulting from audio-on-audio interference

As devices that produce audio become more commonplace and increasingly portable, situations in which two competing audio programmes are present occur more regularly. In order to support the design of systems intended to mitigate the effects of interfering audio (including sound field control, noise cancellation or source separation systems), it is desirable to model the perceived distraction in such situations. Distraction ratings were collected for a range of audio-on-audio interference situations including various target and interferer programmes at three interferer levels, with and without road noise. Time-frequency target-to-interferer ratio (TIR) maps of the stimuli were created using a simple auditory model. A number of feature sets were extracted from the TIR maps, including combinations of mean, standard deviation, minimum and maximum TIR taken across the duration of the programme item. In order to predict distraction ratings from the features, linear regression models were produced. The models were evaluated for goodness-of-fit (RMSE) and generalizability (using a K-fold cross-validation procedure). The best model performed well, with almost all predictions falling within the 95% confidence intervals of the perceptual data. A validation data set was used to test the model, suggesting areas for future improvement.