Citation

Renz T, Leistner P, Liebl A. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 2018; 143(3): EL212.

Affiliation

Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics, Nobelstrasse 12, 70569 Stuttgart, Germany philip.leistner@ibp.fraunhofer.de, andreas.liebl@ibp.fraunhofer.de.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, American Institute of Physics)

DOI

10.1121/1.5027765

PMID

29604706

Abstract

Sound masking can reduce the distraction due to ambient sounds in open-plan offices. This paper compares a typical masking sound with a slope of -5 dB per octave to a steady-state signal with the spectrum of the disturbing speech signal. Subjects had to complete a number recall task and a questionnaire in a laboratory experiment. The sound conditions with the spectrally-matched noise resulted in similar error rates at 3 dB higher speech-to-noise ratios as compared to the standard noise. Using a speech-shaped steady-state noise as masking sound could reduce the effect of distracting speech in the work place more efficiently.

Language: en