EPSI headset

The Extra Passive Sound Isolation (EPSI) headset

In research on speech using altered auditory feedback, commercial headphones are usually used to relay the participant’s voice back to them. Such headphones are not particularly sound isolating and a potential issue is the leakage of the sound of the participant’s naturally transmitted voice through the headphones, leading in effect to the participant being subjected to two separate auditory streams: what the participant is actually saying, and what is played back via the headphones (i.e. the manipulated feedback). This can lead to confounds in the experiment.

In our team, we have therefore developed, constructed, and evaluated the Extra Passive Sound Isolation (EPSI) headset (pictured below). The EPSI headset combines excellent sound quality with a sound isolation that is much higher than in commercial headphones, in order to shut out as much as possible of the participant’s naturally transmitted voice. It allows the researcher to take full control over the participant’s auditory environment, while at the same time being comfortable to wear. The headsets are constructed by placing the loudspeaker drivers from Sennheiser HD 280 PRO into 3M Peltor X5A hearing protection earmuffs, and by attaching a Røde Lavalier II microphone to a specially constructed gooseneck microphone arm that allows for millimetre precision placement of the microphone.

The EPSI headset

For step-by-step instructions on how to build the EPSI headset yourself, see the online supplementary material for the open access paper:

Franken, M.K., Hartsuiker, R.J., Johansson, P., Hall, L., Wartenberg, T., & Lind, A. (2019). Does passive sound attenuation affect responses to pitch-shifted auditory feedback? Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 146, 4108-4121. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.5134449

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