Sensory evaluation of concert hall acoustics

Abstract

Consumer products can be perceived in many ways, and individual taste influences quality judgments. Sensory evaluation techniques have been developed to reveal detailed information about perception of products; recently, sensory evaluation has also been shown to be very useful in subjective evaluation of concert hall acoustics. In particular, individual vocabulary based methods have helped to disentangle the detailed perceptual differences between the different seats within a hall and between different halls. For simultaneous and accurate comparison of acoustics, a symphony orchestra needs to play identically in each hall. Therefore, a symphony orchestra simulator has been developed. It consists of 34 loudspeakers reproducing synchronized recordings of individual musicians playing parts of symphonies in an anechoic chamber. In addition, an advanced spatial sound recording technique via impulse responses from a 3D microphone array is applied to reproduce the acoustics of a concert hall in laboratory conditions. Analysis of spatial impulse responses also enables spatio-temporal visualization of sound energy distributions at measured seats, thus helping us to link the physical properties of the sound to the perception and architecture of concert halls. Finally, this paper highlights our recent results to explain which perceptual characteristics of acoustics drive preference ratings.