Combined effects of noise and room acoustics on voice production in simulated classrooms

This work concerns the relationship of the two main factors, namely the room acoustics and background noise, with the vocal effort. Teachers and non-teachers have been invited to perform talking test under simulated classroom acoustic conditions of varying levels of speech shaped noise in order to understand this relationship. At the same time their subjective preference of teaching in classrooms by means of questionnaires has allowed refining guidelines for classroom acoustic design. Under simulated acoustic environments, talkers distort their voice linearly dependent on the voice support on maximum noise level, and the slope of this relationship is defined as room effect. The magnitude of the room effect depends highly on the Lombard effect, i.e. the vocal effort as function of the noise above a set level of 45 dB .In fact, the average room effect ranges from -0.10 dB/dBs, with the lowest noise level numerically assigned to 0 dB (variable though much lower than medium noise level of 50 dB), of -0.11 dB/dBs with noisier condition of the 50 db, to -0.24 dB/dBs with louder background noise of 62 dB. The trend room effect as function of noise level showed an optimal classroom acoustics as best auditory feedback about the minimum voice level achieved. It has values of voice support STv around -6.1 dB and of the Decay time DT40ME around 1.10 s. The subjective data concerning the perception of general comfort,( reverberance of the room and noise feeling after questionnaire replies) showed that the acoustic comfort as well as the noise, is linearly related to the perception of noise and is not related to the room acoustics.