The relative importance of speech and non-speech components for preferred listening levels

摘要

In a prior paper, the authors reported on a listening test that attempted to establish the relative importance of speech and non-speech components of a mixed soundtrack when matching loudness to reference audio items. That paper concluded that listeners match loudness by overall content rather than by the loudness of the speech or non-speech components. This paper reports on a follow-up listening test which attempts to establish the relative importance of speech and non speech components in setting preferred listening level without any external reference. The results indicate that while speech levels are set more consistently than non-speech levels, listeners tend to set the overall levels more consistently than either of these components.