Abstract
The aim of this study was to create a single-language counterpart of the International Speech Test
Signal (ISTS) and to compare both with respect to their acoustical characteristics. The development
procedure of the Polish Speech Test Signal (PSTS) was analogous to the one of ISTS. The main difference
was that instead of multi-lingual recordings, speech recordings of five Polish speakers were used. The
recordings were cut into 100–600 ms long segments and composed into one-minute long signal, obeying
a set of composition rules, imposed mainly to preserve a natural, speech-like features of the signal.
Analyses revealed some differences between ISTS and PSTS. The latter has about twice as high volume of
voiceless fragments of speech. PSTS’s sound pressure levels in 1/3-octave bands resemble the shape of the
Polish long-term average female speech spectrum, having distinctive maxima at 3–4 and 8–10 kHz which
ISTS lacks. As PSTS is representative of Polish language and contains inputs from multiple speakers, it
can potentially find an application as a standardized signal used during the procedure of fitting hearing
aids for patients that use Polish as their main language.
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