Active Noise Control and Masking Sound on Speech of a Back-Seat Passenger at a Driver’s Seat

Passengers sitting on the back seats of cars while talking on their mobiles can easily experience the invasion of their speech privacy by the driver. Protecting speech privacy can be done by utilizing masking sounds - masking sound may be so loud that it annoys both drivers and speakers. In this research, the feasibility of utilizing active noise control (ANC) which aims to reduce the level of speech at the driver’s seat and, hence, is able to lower the needed level of masking sounds while still protecting the speech privacy is investigated. Speech reception threshold (SRT), which is a subjective measurement method for speech intelligibility, is proceeded for seeing the effect of ANC on speech intelligibility when the masking sound is in use. The SRT measurement result implied that utilizing ANC to reduce the speech level of the back-seat passenger at the driver’s seat is able to lower the needed level of masking sound for keeping the speech privacy.