Reverberation masks consonant stops and blurs the formant transitions essential to speech

Evidence

The effect of reverberation and early reflections is to mask the stops and bursts associated with consonants. They can also blur the rapid formant transitions that are also important cues to different consonant types. Clearly the degradation will depend on both the reverberation time and the relative level of the reverberation to the direct sound. One would expect longer reverberation times to be more damaging than short ones. — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 2455

The effect of reverberation, and early reflections, is to mask the stops and bursts associated with consonants. They can also blur the rapid formant transitions that are also important cues to different consonant types. Clearly the degradation will depend on both the reverberation time and the relative level of the reverberation to the direct sound. One would expect longer reverberation times to be more damaging than short ones. — David Howard, Jamie Angus, coustics and Psychoacoustics, 2441

Categorization

• XREF: Connects consonant identification cues to the listener’s own experience of losing speech clarity in reverberant halls and cathedrals. — connects to: Reverberation disrupts periodicity-based speech segregation only when pitch is intonated; Noise and reverberation both mask consonants, which are about 20 dB quieter than vowels — David Howard, Jamie Angus, coustics and Psychoacoustics, 2462; Speech intelligibility depends on high direct-to-reverberant sound ratios — David Howard, Jamie Angus, coustics and Psychoacoustics, 2434 (+1 more)
• DEFINE: Explains the perceptual mechanism behind lost intelligibility: consonants, not vowels, are the casualty of reverberation.
• corroborated: 4 independent passages support this claim — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 2455; David Howard, Jamie Angus, coustics and Psychoacoustics, 2441

Broader Connections

• Noise and reverberation both mask consonants, which are about 20 dB quieter than vowels #corroborates (0.92) — David Howard, Jamie Angus, coustics and Psychoacoustics, 2462
• Beyond audibility, spectral shape of loss drives which speech cues fail #expands (0.85)
• Speech intelligibility depends on high direct-to-reverberant sound ratios #qualifies (0.75) — David Howard, Jamie Angus, coustics and Psychoacoustics, 2434