Critical bandwidth speech: Arrays of subcritical band speech maintain near-ceiling intelligibility at high amplitudes.

Removal of transition bands from narrow speech passbands through very steep filtering has made it possible to isolate and determine (for the first time) intelligibility of critical bandwidth as well as subcritical bandwidth speech. These rectangular bands have unique intelligibilities when heard singly, paired, or in various multiband arrays spanning the speech spectrum. Thus, a particular sparse spectral array of unfamiliar everyday sentences in this study has demonstrated 98% intelligibility up to 100 dB. Some theoretical and practical applications are suggested. (C) 2017 Acoustical Society of America.