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Comparison between subjective and objective measures of active hearing protector and communication headset attenuation
- Source :
- The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 101(6)
- Publication Year :
- 1997
-
Abstract
- A masked-threshold and a loudness-balance method have been developed to estimate the attenuation of communication headsets and hearing protectors with built-in active noise reduction (ANR) systems. Both methods are used to estimate the attenuation of the ANR systems and the masked-threshold method is also used to estimate the total attenuation (active plus passive) of the device. The procedures are designed to be used in the presence of environmental noise, and to minimize the noise exposure of subjects during the measurements. For comparison, physical measurements of insertion loss have also been performed using a miniature microphone in the concha. Experiments showed that the masked-threshold methods tends to give increased estimates of the attenuation if the noise reduction of the left and right earcup ANR systems differs, as commonly occurs in practice. In contrast, the loudness-balance method reduces the estimates of the active attenuation. Insertion loss measurements may be influenced by the position of the microphone, owing to the spatial variability of the sound field under an earmuff when the ANR system is operating. Differences between physical and subjective measurements of up to 20 dB have been obtained in this study at frequencies of 250 Hz and below for a device in which the sound pressure varied substantially near, and within, the ear canal.
- Subjects :
- Adult
Sound Spectrography
Acoustics and Ultrasonics
Computer science
Microphone
Headset
Acoustics
Noise reduction
Loudness Perception
Loudness
Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
Insertion loss
Humans
Ear Protective Devices
Sound pressure
Environmental noise
Active noise control
Attenuation
Communication
Auditory Threshold
Equipment Design
Noise
Speech Perception
Perceptual Masking
Psychoacoustics
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 00014966
- Volume :
- 101
- Issue :
- 6
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....571cee44c2505a6b250d70e79cb0a9fc