5 key psychoacoustic concepts that esports players need to know about

Learn to optimize the noise around you and effectively communicate when in-game, using tips from Cambridge Professor, Brian Moore.

Time for a thread

1. What is speech understanding?

Neurologists define this as how well you can recognise speech from background noise.

For example, when your teammates are shouting, can you hear an important sound cue, such as an enemy footstep, that could cost you the round

2. Variables affecting speech understanding

Noise:
Irrelevant and unwanted sound information. For example, crowd chants at a LAN event.

Signal:
Relevant and wanted sound information. eg: footsteps in-game or a teammate’s callout.

3. Enabling signals, reducing noise.

As a speaker, you should:
• Speak clearly
• Have a good quality mic
• Point your mic at your mouth

As a listener:
• Have a noise-canceling headset
• Don’t talk over your teammates

4. Speech-to-noise ratio (SNR)

Understanding key signals is dependent on how much noise you hear.

Understanding communication from a teammate will require more effort if there is a bad SNR

To fix this you will need a good quality noise-canceling headset, especially at LAN

5. When does noise become a problem?

In the comfort of your own bedroom, hearing teammates will be much easier compared to being in a large arena with thousands of spectators.

Problems will arise when the brain cannot identify the difference between the signal and noise.

6. If you want to learn more about speech understanding as an esports athlete, you can read our full article here: https://ezone-esports.com/piece/better-speech-understanding-means-better-gaming-experiences

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