The intelligibility of whitened and peak clipped speech.

Abstract

Consonant-nucleus-consonant monosyllabic words were filltered such that each spectral component had equal energy (i.e., "whitened") and peak clipped in one of four ways: minimal, 20, 30, and 40 dB of clipping. In addition, unmodified consonant-nucleus-consonant words were used as stimuli. These different types of sppech were presented to 20 persons with normal hearing at various sensation levels. The results indicate that whitening and peak clipping do not substantially degrade speech intelligibility. In fact, under some conditions whitening and peak clipping may slightly enhance intelligibility.