ASA 126th Meeting Denver 1993 October 4-8

3aNS4. Assessment of speech interference from aircraft flyover noise in schools and other communication critical environments.

Karl Pearsons

BBN Systems and Technologies, 21120 Vanowen St., Canoga Park, CA 91303

Although most assessments of the effects of community noise impacts on people concentrate on annoyance, it is important in some speech-critical settings to assess the degree to which noise interferes with communication as well. Speech intelligibility metrics are helpful in such situations, even though they require more detailed information about noise exposure than is captured by cumulative metrics such as the day--night average sound level (DNL). Alternate metrics for assessing speech intelligibility and their uses and limitations will be described. Comparisons will be made between such metrics and those commonly used to assess environmental noise effects on a long-term average basis.