Influence of the Listening Environment on Recognition of Immersive Reproduction of Orchestral Music Sound Scenes

Abstract

This study investigates how a listening environment (the combination of a room's acoustics and reproduction loudspeaker) influences a listener's perception of reproduced sound fields. Three distinct listening environments with different reverberation times and clarity indices were compared for their perceptual characteristics. Binaural recordings were made of orchestral music, mixed for 22.2 and 2-channel audio reproduction, within each of the three listening rooms. In a subjective listening test, 48 listeners evaluate these binaural recordings in terms of overall preference and five auditory attributes: perceived width, perceived depth, spatial clarity, impression of being enveloped, and spectral fidelity. Factor analyses of these five attribute ratings show that listener perception of the reproduced sound fields focused on two salient factors, spatial and spectral fidelity, yet the attributes' weightings in those two factors differs depending on a listener's previous experience with audio production and 3D immersive audio listening. For the experienced group, the impression of being enveloped was the most salient attribute, with spectral fidelity being the most important for the non-experienced group.