Perceptual scaling of room reverberation

Abstract

Recent evidence suggests that reverberant energy can provide listeners with important spatial information regarding the distance of a sound source. However, relatively little is known about the perceptual attributes of the reverberation itself, and how these attributes may be related to physical properties of the environment that also potentially impact perceived spatial location. Here, perceived similarity among 15 reverberant rooms simulated using virtual auditory space techniques was examined. Room size and surface absorption properties were varied, along with aspects of the virtual simulation including the use of individualized head-related transfer function (HRTF) measurements and properties of the room acoustic simulation. Seven listeners rated perceived similarity on a 100-point scale between all possible pairs of simulated rooms using a speech source signal. Multidimensional scaling techniques were used to estimate scales of perceived room reverberation. Although the resulting scales were complex and somewhat unique to individual listeners, it is clear that the perceptual effects of manipulating properties of the reverberant sound are much larger than the effects due to either nonindividualized HRTFs or nonoptimal room simulation methods. [Work supported by NIDCD.]