Such losses are annoying to the listener. That is, the algorithm weighs the effect of these dropouts as they might be perceived by a listener. The algorithm is not more tolerant of these dropouts. The source can be real or artificial speech. Speech or speech-like test signals are required because the system is designed to transmit only speech.
Artificial speech has advantages in reduced redundancy and talker independence.
This sample is short in duration, about two seconds, and with no pauses. Thus it is suitable for use as a continuously spoken phrase. If you record your own speech, you should ensure that the speech sample has low ambient noise and has short meaningful sentences. This will allow you to obtain the most objective results. You can use Abacus to test your network for the effect of talkers with high ambient noise, or poor digitization, but the results of the PSQM analysis will not give you realistic values for the quality of the network under test.