Hearing-impaired listeners equate speech intelligibility with overall sound quality.
Evidence
In terms of “overall sound quality,” there is some disagreement between the groups. Those with normal hearing preferred all of the channels running at or close to reference levels; anything else is a degradation. Note that the difference between all three channels running at reference level, and the L and R loudspeakers attenuated by 3 dB, is trivial (and statistically insignificant). In total contrast, listeners with hearing disabilities, having difficulty understanding speech, clearly voted for progressively more monophonic sound. They obviously associated speech intelligibility with sound quality. — , Toole, Floyd E - Sound reproduction-…, 1437
In terms of “overall sound quality”, there is fundamental disagreement between the groups. Those with normal hearing preferred all of the channels running at or close to reference levels; anything else is a degradation. In total contrast, listeners with hearing disabilities, having difficulty understanding speech, clearly voted for progressively more monophonic sound. They seemed to equate speech clarity with sound quality, which is understandable. — Toole, Floyd E, Sound reproduction- the acoustics and…, 1910
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the reader’s existing knowledge of audiometric testing and speech-in-noise perception research; the normal-hearing group’s preference for full multichannel preserves perceptual fidelity while hearing-impaired listeners trade spatial richness for intelligibility. — connects to: Hearing-impaired professionals give confident but unreliable sound quality judgments.; Hearing loss makes listener opinions unreliable no matter how experienced; Intelligibility is measured by proportion of words heard correctly, not by perceived quality (+1 more)
- SHARE: A home-theater-minded friend with hearing loss would immediately see themselves in the finding that dialogue clarity trumps immersion.
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — , Toole, Floyd E - Sound reproduction-…, 1437; Toole, Floyd E, Sound reproduction- the acoustics and…, 1910