Acoustics Perception in Special-Shaped Spaces: A Systematic Review

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to review the acoustic perception of special-shaped spaces. Peer-reviewed English-language journal articles published between 2003 and 2023 were searched in the Web of Science and Scopus databases by using the keywords “perception”, “acoustics”, “flat space”, “extra-large space”, “coupled space”, “long space”, and spatial function and their synonyms. The inclusion criteria were as follows: (1) Included articles should focus on the field of psychoacoustics. (2) Spaces should be clearly identified as one or more of the four special spaces described above. (3) Subjective evaluation methods for spatial acoustic perception should be used. Finally, a total of 31 studies were included. A standardised data extraction form was used to collect spatial information, subject information, sound environment information, and other information. The results show that comfort expresses positive perception results in all four different spaces, whereas annoyance is negative in both flat and extra-large spaces, and satisfaction shows the opposite results in flat and coupled spaces, whereas perceived reverberation is the specific dimension for coupled space. In addition, unique conclusions were obtained for each type of space and special cases in the spaces were individually characterised.