Early wall reflections pin perceived sound space to room size

Evidence

Because of the precedence effect, this reflection dominates, and the replayed sound is perceived as coming from a space the size of the listening room, which is clearly undesirable. What is required is a means of making the sound from the loudspeakers appear as if it is coming from a larger space by suppressing the early reflections from the nearby walls, as shown in Figure 7. — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 2283

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the precedence effect (Haas effect) and the earlier listening/silence material; also ties to the reader’s stated purpose of understanding how acoustics shape perceived space. — connects to: Sitting near walls creates repetition-pitch coloration in perceived sound; Room acoustics requires modeling direct sound then early reflections; Envelopment in small rooms must come from recordings rather than natural reflections (+9 more)
• DEFINE: Introduces the ‘live end dead end’ (LEDE) control-room approach.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 2283

Broader Connections

• The gap between direct sound and reverberation encodes the perceived size of a space #corroborates (0.90) — David Howard, Jamie Angus, coustics and Psychoacoustics, 1776
• Small playback rooms impose their own early reflections on recorded sound #expands (0.82)
• Auditory expectation of reverberation is calibrated against visual room size. #expands (0.75)