Optimizing teaching room acoustics: Investigating the exclusive use of a distributed electroacoustic installation to improve the speech intelligibility

摘要

The possibility to improve speech intelligibility in classrooms of inadequate acoustic design, exclusively by using an electroacoustic installation is investigated in this work. Measurement results derived from an overall 6-loudspeaker arrangement response in different locations inside a test classroom are compared to those derived from a 1-loudspeaker electroacoustic response in the speaker's location. Preliminary results indicate that well-established parameters such as C-50 and D-50 automatically calculated, show no significant improvement. Extended investigation of the responses as well as other criteria such as direct to reverb ratios (DRR) shown that there is noteworthy enhancement in addition to the subjective acoustic perception. Moreover, DRR is shown to further improve from the employment of a room correction technique based on smoothed responses.