ISCA Archive Eurospeech 1993
ISCA Archive Eurospeech 1993

Objective assessment of speech communication systems; introduction of a software based procedure

Herman J. M. Steeneken, J. A. Verhave, Tammo Houtgast

The Speech Transmission Index (STI) [5], and the Room Acoustical STI (RASTI) [2], have been internationally accepted as objective standards for the prediction of the intelligibility of speech communication channels, [3]. Recently, the applicability, diagnostic power, and prediction accuracy of these indices have been further extended [7]. These extensions include the possibility to predict the speech intelligibility for both male and female speech, and for individual phoneme groups (plosives, fricatives, vowel-like consonants, and vowels). Based on the improved algorithm and on the experience obtained with the existing STI-measuring devices (25 systems were installed in other laboratories), a new development was initiated for a software based measuring system with standard equipment (personal computer with data-acquisition). This resulted in a software package which is system independent. The paper describes the improvement of the STI, the new measuring method, and will also give some examples of the applications (electro-acoustical transducers, and a telephone communication channel). The method can also be used to specify the input conditions for speech recognition systems.