Listener perception of spatial impression and auditory source width and their influence on overall impression in real rooms and headphone studies

Abstract

Comparisons of listener evaluations of music in real room situations and in headphone listening studies were used to assess the contribution of reverberance, loudness, auditory source width (ASW), and spatial impression on the overall impression of music listening and to evaluate their role as independent acoustic variables. Room studies were conducted using large numbers of average listeners at designated locations with a live sound source. Headphone listening studies were conducted using anechoic recordings with simulated acoustic environments (early reflections and reverberation) having different configurations of early and late sound energy. Directional components of the early and late energy were independently modeled as part of the experiment (Gold, 1994). Regression models were conducted to assess the interrelationship of independent variables on listener overall impression. In many cases, independent elements could be identified as contributing to overall impression; however, these elements were not the same in each case. For example, in cases where reverberance is not present, loudness and ASW become greater contributors. In addition, an attempt was made to find out if there is a listener distinction between ASW (a widening of the source sound) and spatial impression (the quality of being immersed in the sound).