How well can you understand the newsreader on the car radio at 100 kilometres per hour?
And what does the driver hear of the conversation in the back seat? These and similar questions about speech intelligibility in complex noise/useful sound situations can be predicted fairly accurately not only by means of exemplary measurements, but now also by computer calculations.

"Based on work at the University of Oldenburg and the Fraunhofer Project Group for Hearing, Speech and Audio Technology, we were recently able to present the Sip toolbox (speech intelligibility prediction) at the Fraunhofer stand at DAGA 2010," explains Prof Dr Dr Birger Kollmeier proudly. "We are also working on several theses on the topic of "speech intelligibility in motor vehicles", so that we have been able to significantly expand the Oldenburg spectrum of research expertise and services into the field of automotive applications," Kollmeier is pleased to say. Of particular interest here are the (still) young elderly, who are struggling with a gradual onset of hearing loss in difficult communication situations and are therefore learning to appreciate the advantages of speech processing even for those with mild to moderate hearing loss.