The Acceptability of Speech with Radio Interference

A listening test was conducted to investigate the acceptability of audio-on-audio interference for radio programs featuring speech as the target. Twenty-one subjects, including naïve and expert listeners, were presented with 200 randomly assigned pairs of stimuli and asked to report, for each trial, whether the listening scenario was acceptable or unacceptable. Stimuli pairs were set to randomly selected SNRs ranging from 0 to 45 dB. Results showed no significant difference between subjects according to listening experience. A logistic regression to acceptability was carried out based on SNR. The model had accuracy R2 = 0.87, RMSE = 14%, and RMSE* = 7%. By accounting for the presence of background audio in the target program, 90% of the variance could be explained.