Increase in voice level and speaker comfort in lecture rooms

Teachers often suffer from health problems related to their voice. These problems are related to their working environment, including the acoustics of the lecture rooms. However, there is a lack of studies linking the room acoustic parameters to the voice produced by the speaker. In this pilot study, the main goals are to investigate whether objectively measurable parameters of the rooms can be related to an increase in the voice sound power produced by speakers and to the speakers’ subjective judgments about the rooms. In six different rooms with different sizes, reverberation times, and other physical attributes, the sound power level produced by six speakers was measured. Objective room acoustic parameters were measured in the same rooms, including reverberation time and room gain, and questionnaires were handed out to people who had experience talking in the rooms. It is found that in different rooms significant changes in the sound power produced by the speaker can be found. It is also found that these changes mainly have to do with the size of the room and to the gain produced by the room. To describe this quality, a new room acoustic quantity called “room gain” is proposed.