Method for the selection of sentence materials for efficient measurement of the speech reception threshold

A method is described to select sentence materials for efficient measuremen t of the speech reception threshold (SRT). The first part of the paper addr esses the creation of the sentence materials, the recording procedure, and a listening experiment to evaluate the new speech materials. The result is a set of 1272 sentences, where every sentence has been uttered by two male and two female speakers. In the second part of the paper, a method is descr ibed to select subsets with properties that are desired for an efficient me asurement of the SRT. For two speakers, this method has been applied to obt ain two subsets for measurement of the SRT in stationary noise with the lon g-term average spectrum of speech. Lastly, a listening experiment has been conducted where the two subsets teach comprising 39 lists of 13 sentences e ach) are directly compared to the existing sets of Plomp and Mimpen [Audiol ogy 18, 43-52 (1979)] and Smoorenburg [J. Acoust. Sec. Am. 91, 421-437 (199 2)]. One of the outcomes is that the newly developed sets can be considered as equivalent tb these existing sets. (C) 2000 Acoustical Society of Ameri ca. [S0001-4966(90)04702-6].