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University of Edinburgh
 

Improving the Listening Environment for Deaf Children in Educational Settings

Presented on Tuesday 13 May 2010

Dr Laurent Galbrun
School of the Built Environment
Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh

Workshop 2 Experimenting reverberation time changes

Objective
The aim of this workshop is to develop an awareness of how reverberation time affects
speech intelligibility. This is done by listening critically to recorded speech, as it is played back with different reverberation times.

Method
This experiment will be carried out in the anechoic chamber of Heriot-Watt University. The chamber is a specially constructed room in which the walls, floor and ceiling are covered with sound absorbing wedges made of mineral wool. This provides an environment with no reflections (that is, a free-field).

Figure 2.1 Anechoic chamber

anechoic chamber

A reverberation processor will be used, which will allow changing reverberation time in real time, and the recorded speech will be played through loudspeakers in the anechoic
chamber.

Participants will also visit the reverberant chamber of Heriot-Watt University, as this will
allow them to experience speech in a highly reverberant space.