Estimate how private a conversation may be based on speech level, distance, wall or partition isolation, background noise, sound masking, and room absorption. Calculate speech-to-noise ratio, estimated listener speech level, and privacy category.
Speech level:
The calculator starts with the estimated speech sound level near the talker.
Losses and leakage:
Distance, partition isolation, and room absorption reduce speech level, while gaps and flanking paths can increase audible leakage.
Noise floor:
Background noise and sound masking are combined logarithmically, then compared with the speech level at the listener.
A speech privacy calculator helps estimate whether conversations may be overheard in offices, meeting rooms, bedrooms, medical rooms, counseling rooms, classrooms, studios, and shared workspaces.
This is a simplified estimate. True speech privacy depends on frequency bands, speech intelligibility, room layout, wall construction, doors, vents, flanking paths, masking spectrum, and listener attention.
This calculator uses a simplified speech privacy estimate:
Speech privacy describes how difficult it is for someone outside the conversation to hear or understand spoken words.
Estimate the speech level at the listener, combine the background and masking noise, then compare them using speech-to-noise ratio.
Yes. Proper sound masking can reduce speech intelligibility by raising the background noise floor in a controlled way.
Speech can pass through weak walls, hollow doors, door gaps, vents, ceilings, floors, shared ducts, and other flanking paths.