Directivity of the human vocal source in the horizontal plane

The directional characteristics of a male and a female voice in the horizontal plane were measured in an anechoic room. Results were compared with the only two other studies known to have been done using human subjects. The results of the three studies agree very well. The directional characteristics of two loudspeakers were also measured. One loudspeaker, about the size of the human head, did a fairly good job of emulating the directional characteristics of the human vocal source. Another large loudspeaker did a very poor job. The directional characteristics of a manikin designed and evaluated by Olson (1972. J. Audio. Eng. Soc. 20, 446-451) agreed well with the averaged results from the three studies of human talkers.