The widespread adoption of face masks is now a standard public health response to the 2020 pandemic. Although studies have shown that wearing a face mask interferes with speech and intelligibility, relating the acoustic response of the mask to design parameters such as fabric choice, number of layers and mask geometry is not well understood. Using a dummy head mounted with a loudspeaker at its mouth generating a broadband signal, we report the acoustic response associated with 10 different masks (different material/design) and the effect of material layers; a small number of masks were found to be almost acoustically transparent (minimal losses). While different mask material and design result in different frequency responses, we find that material selection has somewhat greater influence on transmission characteristics than mask design or geometry choices.

口罩的广泛采用现在是对 2020 年大流行的标准公共卫生应对措施。尽管研究表明，佩戴面罩会干扰语音和可理解性，但将面罩的声学响应与面料选择、层数和面罩几何形状等设计参数联系起来还不是很清楚。使用在其嘴部安装有扬声器的假人头产生宽带信号，我们报告了与 10 种不同面罩（不同材料/设计）相关的声学响应以及材料层的影响；发现少数面罩几乎是声学透明的（损失最小）。虽然不同的掩模材料和设计会导致不同的频率响应，