Complex Acoustic Environments: Review, Framework, and Subjective Model.

This was an exploratory subjective rating study, not a test of treatment, hearing aid settings, or a diagnostic tool. Most participants were young adults with normal hearing, so the findings may not apply to older adults or people with greater hearing loss. The scenes were urban recordings from Sydney, reproduced in an anechoic chamber without visual cues, so everyday listening contexts were simplified. The target speech was one female voice, repeated because the edits were shorter than the scenes, which may have affected realism. The model explained 41.66% of the variability. The paper states that 58% could not be efficiently modeled. Reverberation, familiarity, realism, and envelopment were difficult to separate from level or scene selection. Individual differences in effort with background speech had no identified predictor, including hearing loss.

The paper lists Oticon Fonden and Macquarie University as funders.

Do not read the complexity framework as a tested clinical assessment or as evidence that reducing background speech helps. It is an exploratory laboratory rating study in mostly normal-hearing young adults, and no patient outcome or intervention was tested.