Listeners adapt to reverberant rooms within seconds, improving speech intelligibility by 18%

Evidence

Brandewie and Zahorik (2010) found that speech intelligibility improved by about 18% when listeners were given prior exposure to reverberant rooms, leading them to conclude that “the physical effects of acoustic reflections may be suppressed via high-level perceptual processes that require adaptation time to the particular reflective listening environment in order to be effective.” In subsequent experiments even more demanding tests confirmed this result, noting that “the processes underlying this effect are relatively rapid—on the order of seconds—and do not show longer term improvement” (Srinivasan and Zahorik, 2012; Zahorik and Brandewie, 2016). — Toole, Floyd E, Sound reproduction- the acoustics and…, 559

Categorization

• QUESTION: What are the ‘high-level perceptual processes’ that suppress acoustic reflections, and do they operate for music as well as speech?