Voice support from acoustically retroreflective surfaces
Published in Proceedings of the Euronoise, 2021
Acoustically retroreflective surfaces can reflect the sound of a person’s voice back to them, thereby increasing voice support and potentially influencing the talker to reduce their speaking level (the ‘room effect’). This paper gives an overview of experiments with acoustically retroreflective surfaces: existing building façades, fabricated arrays of several corner cube retroreflectors, a retroreflective dome, and a retroreflective room. Results from physical acoustic measurements and numerical acoustic simulations are described. In general, results indicate that a high level of voice support can be achieved in the high frequency range (2 kHz octave band and above). An experimental conversation elicitation task was used to examine the effect of frequency-limited autophonic support on speaking level, confirming that voice support limited to high frequencies has a similar room effect on speaking level to broadband support.
Recommended citation: Cabrera, Densil, Jonothan Holmes, Shuai Lu, Mary Rapp, Manuj Yadav, and Oliver Hutchison. "Voice support from acoustically retroreflective surfaces." Proceedings of the Euronoise (2021).
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