Headphone- and loudspeaker-based concert hall auralizations and their effects on listeners' judgments

Abstract

Room impulse responses were measured in a wide variety of concert and recital halls throughout New York State using a spherical microphone array and dummy head as receivers. These measurements were used to create auralizations for second-order ambisonic playback via a loudspeaker array and headphone playback, respectively. The playback methods were first evaluated objectively to determine how accurately they could reproduce the measured soundfields with respect to spatial cues. Subjects were then recruited for listening tests conducted with both reproduction methods and asked to evaluate the different spaces based on specific parameters and overall subjective preference. The results were examined in order to determine the degree to which judgments of the different parameters were affected by the playback method.