[Jerry Steiger]

"Scott Dorsey" wrote in message
...
The thing about the artificial mouth is that it will do a good job of
modelling someone talking into it, both in the correct manner and from
various different directions. If you need real intelligibility
measurements
to show someone, this is critical. If you don't need objective measures
of intelligibility, and you can assume that folks will always be
positioned
in the right place, you can just use a headphone driver for testing.

It sounds like this would be a very good piece of test equipment for us to
have if we get really serious about this. I don't see it happening for some
time though, as I could imagine it sucking up large amounts of time.

If people are using the thing from three feet away, you need to be able to
measure response with a sound source three feet away. Because it may be
very different than the response up close, especially if you are using a
directional microphone.

Yes, I was thinking that I would just measure the microphone and speaker
response from three feet ( or a meter, since that is the "standard" distance
for measuring sensitivity), knowing that the response would only be better
at closer distances. Perhaps I should consider doing multiple tests to cover
more of the usage scenarios.

My guess is that under typical surveying environment, at three feet away
from the mike the environmental noise problem is going to be severe. And
anything you do to make the mike more directional is going to make wind
noise problems worse.

I hadn't thought about the interaction of wind noise and directionality in
the microphone. I was thinking that a directional microphone would be better
since the user is almost always in front of the unit and the noise is liable
to be coming from any direction. Just mounting the microphone in the unit
compromises its omnidirectionality by some amount. How much effect does
directionality have on wind noise pickup?

Incidentally, let me commend the Gentex omni capsules to you. They are
very resistant to rain and mud. They also sell noise-cancelling mikes
for close-talking use, but that does not sound useful to you.

Great! I hadn't run across them. An inherently waterproof microphone is a
distinct advantage. (I actually used Panasonic capsules that were exposed on
the front side in the first product we made, since they seemed to survive
our dunk testing without any problems, but we got nervous about their
long-term health and sealed them from water in later products.)

Thanks again!

Jerry Steiger