Noise
Interfering sound is the name for a sound that is an intended sound recording or the perception of a sound event , e.g. B. a music lecture , disturbs. Interfering noise can e.g. B. construction site noise or traffic noise that affects the useful sound (e.g. music or a conversation), or in measurement technology or audio technology an undesired sound that significantly affects the recording result.
Psychoacoustically , the relationship between useful sound and interference sound is described by the articulation index or the speech intelligibility index, which represent measures for the acoustic quality of linguistic communication.
In the case of extreme background noise, even those with normal hearing often find it difficult to hear the voices of the interlocutors and to understand what they are trying to convey to them. If the interfering sound level is 6 dB louder than the spoken word, people with good hearing only hear about 40 percent of the spoken words and have to piece together the rest of the message or ask questions. In such situations, people with hearing loss can often no longer understand anything. Even wearers of hearing systems are severely disadvantaged here, as most technical hearing aids can only differentiate between background noise and useful noise to a limited extent.
Noise- reducing headphones can reduce background noise .