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Research Article

Influence of SNR difference on the Korean speech intelligibility in classrooms

교실에서 신호대잡음비 변이가 한국어 음성명료도에 미치는 영향

Chan-Jae Park1
,
Sung-Min Jo2
,
Chan-Hoon Haan1∗
박 찬재1
,
조 성민2
,
한 찬훈1∗
1충북대학교 건축공학과
2PEAS 친환경 엔지니어링
∗Corresponding Author
30 November 2019. pp. 651-660
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Abstract

The present study aims to find out the necessary speech sound level which can satisfy with the speech intelligibility in a noisy classroom environments. For this, auralized materials were made to undertake listening tests with 27 people. Speech intelligibility tests were carried out using both Consonant-Vowel- Consonant (CVC) and Phonetically Balanced Words (PBW) methods. Signal to noise ratio was changed by 5 dB for each test. As a result, it was found that speech intelligibilities are increasing with larger Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR). It was also found that there is a lot of difference of speech intelligibilities by SNR for syllables (CVC) with the Reverberation Time (RT) of 1.5 s. However, any significant difference was not found for words (PBW) in the case with RTs of below 0.8 s. Also, it was revealed through the 2-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) test that SNR is the only attentive factor which can affect the Korean speech intelligibilities for both PBW and CVC methods. Therefore, RTs below 0.8 s could be the acoustic criteria for classroom which can minimize the effects of noise. In the case with RTs larger than 0.8 s, much larger SNR is needed to give sufficient speech intelligibility.

Keywords
Classroom
Korean
Speech intelligibility
Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR)
Reverberation time
2-way analysis of variance (ANOVA)

본 연구는 소음 환경에서 화자의 음성 레벨이 어느 정도일 때 한국어에 대한 청자의 음성명료도 변화를 파악하고자 시행되었다. 이를 위해 잔향시간이 다른 교실 환경을 모형화하여 가청화시재를 제작한 후 피실험자 27명을 대상으로 청감실험을 실시해 음성명료도를 평가하였다. 음성명료도에 대한 평가는 한국어 음성명료도 평가법 중 음절법과 단어법을 이용하였으며 잔향시간과 신호대잡음비를 5dB씩 변화시키면서 정답률의 변화를 관찰하였다. 실험결과 음절법의 경우 신호대잡음비가 커질수록 이에 비례해 음성명료도 평가점수 또한 높아짐을 알 수 있었다. 단어법의 경우 잔향시간이 1.5 s인 경우에는 음성명료도 평가점수가 신호대잡음비와 비례적인 관계를 보이지만, 잔향시간이 0.8 s로 짧은 상황에서는 비례관계를 찾을 수 없었다. 이원변량분석 결과 한국어 음성명료도 평가법 중 음절법과 단어법에 공통적으로 유의한 영향 인자는 신호대잡음비라는 것으로 확인되었다. 따라서, 한국어 교실의 적정 잔향시간 기준인 0.8 s 이하를 만족하는 경우 소음에 따른 영향을 제어할 수 있으나, 잔향시간이 기준보다 긴 경우에는 신호대잡음비가 커야만 높은 음성명료도를 확보할 수 있을 것으로 판단된다.

키워드
교실
한국어
음성명료도
신호대잡음비
잔향시간
이원변량분석
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Information
  • Publisher :The Acoustical Society of Korea
  • Publisher(Ko) :한국음향학회
  • Journal Title :The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
  • Journal Title(Ko) :한국음향학회지
  • Volume : 38
  • No :6
  • Pages :651-660
  • Received Date : 2019-06-24
  • Revised Date : 2019-08-29
  • Accepted Date : 2019-11-14
  • DOI :https://doi.org/10.7776/ASK.2019.38.6.651
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