| This investigation examined the effects of actual room reverberation and simulated reverberation on speech perception of listeners with normal hearing. Subjects consisted of 22 adults with normal hearing. Speech perception was assessed with the Modified Rhyme Test in actual room settings and in simulated reverberation room environments in a sound-treated IAC booth via the CATT-Acoustic software program and the Lexicon MPX-550 Effects Processor. Reverberation times were 0.5, 1.3, and 5.3 seconds. Noise competition consisted of speech-spectrum noise. Results indicated that the CATT-Acoustic reverberation simulations closely approximated the speech-perception abilities of adults with normal hearing in actual room settings, while the simulations via the Lexicon MPX-550 did not closely approximate speech perception in actual rooms. Clinical implications of these data are discussed. |
