Speaker
Description
While traditional room acoustic metrics successfully evaluate speech intelligibility, recent research indicates that high intelligibility does not guarantee low listening effort. In modern meeting environments, signal-to-noise ratios are typically sufficient for high intelligibility due to short communication distances and adjustable playback levels. Consequently, this study reevaluates acoustic metrics for predicting listening effort under equal-loudness conditions to isolate perceptual effects beyond mere loudness. The mean opinion scores derived from a subjective listening test were regressed against established acoustic parameters using ordinary least squares.Leave-one-out cross-validation revealed that a linear combination of reverberation time and direct-to-reverberant energy ratio outperformed classic metrics such as clarity and the speech transmission index.