Re: spatial separation and ASA (Ward Drennan )


Subject: Re: spatial separation and ASA
From:    Ward Drennan  <ward(at)IHR.GLA.AC.UK>
Date:    Thu, 1 Feb 2001 10:26:36 -0000

> In other words, > in cases where two signals were partially segregated by factor X, > adding a difference in location would strengthen the segregation. By separating spatially, you'll get a change in signal to noise ratio at the two ears that will inevitably help. I think the work of Plomp (1976, Acustica 34, 200-211) on speech intelligibility sheds some light on this. In an anechoic environoment, spatial separation of two speech sources gives a 5 dB advantage for speech intelligibility. If the environment gets very echoic though, the advantage drops to 1 to 2 dB. Note that head shadow plays a big role here. If you were to low-pass filter the speech (limiting mostly to interaural timing cues), I bet the advantage would drop to 2 or 3 dB in the anechoic and be non-existant in reverberation. Perhaps there are some more studies showing this? Speech has a number of segregating cues, but can anyone point to more constrained studies that show this, maybe with only one factor X? >We know that spatial > differences do play an important role in SEQUENTIAL grouping.). Perhaps because of the integration of consitstant interaural cues over time yeilding a clearer 'picture' of the scene? > My point about spatial information was not that it was very weak > but that it was only one of a number of cues for sound > separation. To this should be added the idea that it may need > those other cues in order to be effective itself. > Yes, perhaps the human is better at Auditory SA than the machine, because people are especially good at integrating all the information. Best Regards, Ward Drennan


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