PERFORMANCE OF NOISE INDEXES IN OFFICE ENVIRONMENT DOMINATED BY NOISEFROM HUMAN SPEECH

An acoustical environment survey was carried out in six similar air co nditioned landscaped offices in which human speech was considered to b e the major source of complaint. Both questionnaire and physical noise measurement were administrated Physical noise measurement data reveal higher sound energy within the human speech frequency range and high speech intelligibility level in the offices. Results also show that th e preferred noise criterion gives good correlation with the auditory s ensation comments of the office workers. The noise climate, the equiva lent sound pressure level and the noise pollution level are also found to be useful in assessing the acoustical environment inside the surve yed offices. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.