Intelligo: A Client/Server Architecture for Intelligibility Tests

Over the past decade, in the realm of acousti- cal engineering, the effects of room noise and reverberation on “word intelligibility” and on “listening difficulty” have been investigated. More recently, such tests have been conducted in acoustically treated and untreated rooms with a single listener at a time. In this paper, we overcome this limit by proposing a modular, portable, cost-effective, easy- to-extend and easy-to-deploy solution for simultaneous intelligibility tests on possibly large groups of listeners. The collected data are not only the very test results in term of correctness, but also the subjective listening difficulty and the precisely measured response time. We designed and implemented a client/server architecture based on a wireless server and a number of simple Java- enabled clients, such as modern mobile phones or PDAs (Personal Digital Assistant). Our preliminary tests proved the effectiveness and reliability of the solution and pave the way for a wide range of applications.