Room Acoustical Parameters as Predictors of Room Acoustical Impression: What Do We Know and What Would We Like to Know?

Abstract

Room acoustical parameters are audio features, usually extracted from monaural or binaural measurements of room acoustical environments, and used to predict different aspects of the 'room acoustical impression'. The paper takes a closer look at the nature of this perceptional construct and at different approaches to develop a psychological measuring instrument for the multidimensional perceptional profile of room acoustical environments. Even after several decades of research, there is no satisfactory solution available for this purpose. The reasons for this lie in methodological deficits with respect to test development and item analysis as well as in a much too small sample of stimuli used in previous studies. Prospects for progress are opened up by state-of-the-art technologies for room acoustical simulation and auralization, which may be used to provide a large and representative sample of room acoustical environments as well as an authentic presentation in experimental studies. The fundamental perceptional components delivered by this approach will, most likely, not be predictable by traditional room acoustical parameters, but require advanced measurement techniques based on spherical arrays of transducers for both source and receiver characteristics, as well as new auditory models for feature extraction. The physical and psychological aspects of the problem are, in any case, inextricably linked with each other. Keywords Room acoustics • Measurement and simulation • Room acoustical perception 1 Rooms as Technical and Perceptual Objects In trying to capture the perceptual qualities of rooms, as a basis for room acoustical design or evaluation, one has to deal with the fact that rooms cannot be perceived as such, but only through their effect on the presented signal, the sound source, and the receiver involved. As with any other transmission system, its properties can only be studied in response to a given type of excitation. Assuming the room as a linear and time-invariant acoustical system, the output Y (ω) as the result of an excitation with the input signal X (ω) is given as S. Weinzierl () Audio Communication Group,

The Semantics of Timbre

“…Putting it differently, in evaluating the timbre of a sound, listeners invariably evaluate timbral characteristics of the presentation space too. The in uence of the latter on the spectral shape of a sound, as illustrated by the room acoustic transfer function (Weinzierl and Vorländer 2015), is manifested in a characteristic ampli cation or attenuation of certain frequencies, superimposed by an increasing attenuation of the spectral envelope toward higher frequencies due to air absorption. The extent of these effects can vary substantially from one space to another, depending on the geometry and materials of the room.…”

Measurements in room acoustics

“…Representativeness of auditorium When measurements are taken to answer a research question, care must be taken to ensure that the object under test is suitable for and representative of the research objective. On the other hand, it is necessary to survey a suitable range of auditoria to make sure that the results remain meaningful for different types of rooms that are used for the same given purpose (Weinzierl & Vorländer, 2015).…”

Assessing room acoustic listening expertise

“…In studies of the perception of room acoustic properties, three aspects have consistently been shown to be constitutive in determining the acoustic impact of rooms, such as musical performance spaces-see Kuusinen and Lokki (2017) or Weinzierl and Vorl€ ander (2015) for an overview. These are…”