Human speaker identification of known voices transmitted through different user interfaces and transmission channels

Together with the variety of networks, diverse terminals and devices, such as telephones with handset or hands-free mode, mobile phones and headsets, are commonly available for everyday calls. We conducted an auditory test to examine the combined influence of these user interfaces, audio bandwidths, coding schemes and packet loss on human speaker identification of previously known voices. The effects of the user interfaces on transmission and reception were tested separately with the different channel impairments. Our study confirms that the identification task is facilitated if the voices are transmitted through wideband instead of narrowband channels, and that headsets and hands-free phones take greater advantage of the improved bandwidth that is gaining ground rapidly.