Percentage Articulation Loss of Consonants. This machine measure of intelligibility is closely associated with the TEF sound analyzer. It is computed from measurements of the Direct-to-Reverberant Ratio and the Early Decay Time using a set of correlations defined by SynAudCon, and is specified in percent.
Since %ALcons expresses loss of consonant definition, lower values are associated with greater intelligibility. It is generally assumed that the maximum allowable value for typical paging applications is 10%, assuming that the environment is relatively free of masking noise. For learning environments and voice warning systems, the desired value is 5% or less.