Performance of noise indices in office environment dominated by noise from human speech

An acoustical environment survey was carried out in six similar air conditioned landscaped offices in which human speech was considered to be 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 the preferred noise criterion gives good correlation with the auditory sensation comments of the office workers. The noise climate, the equivalent sound pressure level and the noise pollution level are also found to be useful in assessing the acoustical environment inside the surveyed offices. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.