Effect of Skill Level on Listener Performance in 3D Audio Evaluation

Abstract

A previous experiment (Part 1) found that, within the context of 3D audio evaluation, both audio production experience and musical training were significant predictors of listener consistency in making preference or attribute rating judgments of stimuli. In that study, 72 subjects ranging from highly experienced to naive listeners evaluated an excerpt of orchestral music captured by three different 3D music-recording techniques. Using the same data set from Part 1, the current study (Part 2) examines whether the results of skilled listeners can be generalized to the larger population of unskilled listeners within the context of 3D audio evaluation. Results show no significant changes in the rank order of recording technique attribute ratings or preferences as a function of listener skill. Results also show that using highly skilled participants will result in gains in statistical power. This allows for the detection of subtler differences between stimuli or greater efficiency in the number of trials needed to achieve a significant result.