ABSTRACT

In many everyday situations, we are surrounded by sounds originating from a variety of sources. These sounds might include a number of people speaking in the background, a car passing by, music playing on the radio, a telephone ringing, the wind blowing, and so on. The signals from each source are mixed together when they enter the two ears to form a composite waveform. The frequency components of each source are not constrained within an isolated region of the spectrum but overlap with frequency components of other sources. The intelligibility of speech in adverse conditions is greatly influenced by the spectral and temporal characteristics of the noise, specifically, whether the noise is stationary or nonstationary, narrowband or wideband, modulated or continuous (steady-state), and whether it is presented monaurally or binaurally.