Noise that varies at speech-like rates hijacks auditory attention

Evidence

There may be situations where acoustic treatment may be essential before sound reinforcement is attempted. Interfering noises which have similar rates of variation as speech are particularly difficult to deal with as they fool our higher order processing centers into attending to them as if they are speech. Because of this their effect is often more severe than a simple measurement of level would indicate. — David Howard, Jamie Angus, coustics and Psychoacoustics, 2471

Categorization

• SEED: Seed for an essay on why certain background sounds (a colleague’s phone chattering at a speech’s cadence) are so much more maddening than louder constant noise.
• SHARE: Good tidbit for an audio engineer or acoustics consultant about why measured dB underestimates the nuisance of speech-rhythm interference.
• XREF: connects to: Auditory attention requires temporal variation in any sound signal

Related

• Masking noises that mimic speech’s rhythm disrupt intelligibility more than loudness predicts (similarity 0.88)
• Auditory attention requires temporal variation in any sound signal (similarity 0.87)
• Interfering noises resembling speech’s modulation fool attention and exceed their level (similarity 0.86)
• Sound must vary over time to hold listener attention (similarity 0.82)
• Noise is defined relationally against the signal rather than acoustically (similarity 0.80)
• Noise research shifted from hearing-loss risk to subjective annoyance (similarity 0.80)
• Hearing-loss risk dominates noise research because it is predictable from sound properties (similarity 0.79)
• Impaired pitch perception hampers understanding speech amid background noise (similarity 0.79)
• High ambient noise forces listeners to raise volume toward hearing-loss levels (similarity 0.79)
• Perceived loudness of time-varying sounds is set by short-time peak values. (similarity 0.78)
• Noise is defined by annoyance, disturbance, or hearing harm rather than loudness alone (similarity 0.78)
• Noise is defined by its disturbing effect relative to a desired signal (similarity 0.78)
• Loudness at high sound levels arises from excitation spreading across adjacent frequency bands (similarity 0.78)
• Auditory sensitivity varies nonuniformly across the frequency range (similarity 0.78)