title: Measurement and prediction of voice support and room gain in school classrooms.
abstract: Objective acoustic parameters have been measured in 30 school classrooms. These parameters include usual descriptors of the acoustic quality from the listeners' standpoint, such as reverberation time, speech transmission index, and background noise level, and two descriptors of the acoustic properties for a speaker: Voice support and room gain. This paper describes the measurement method for these two parameters and presents a prediction model for voice support and room gain derived from the diffuse field theory. The voice support for medium-sized classrooms with volumes between 100 and 250 m(3) and good acoustical quality lies in the range between -14 and -9 dB, whereas the room gain is in the range between 0.2 and 0.5 dB. The prediction model for voice support describes the measurements in the classrooms with a coefficient of determination of 0.84 and a standard deviation of 1.2 dB.
authors.affiliation: Acoustic Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby DK-2800, Denmark. david.pelegrin@gmx.com
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Pelegrín-García
authors.forename: Jonas
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Brunskog
authors.forename: Viveka
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Lyberg-Åhlander
authors.forename: Anders
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Löfqvist
mesh_terms: D000162:Acoustics; D004779:Environment Design; D006801:Humans; D008953:Models, Anatomic; D009623:Noise, Occupational; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D012574:Schools; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013068:Speech Production Measurement / Q000379:methods; D014831:Voice / Q000502:physiology*; D017132:Workplace