Physical accuracy of a sound field does not predict perceived accuracy

Evidence

An alternative goal of sound reproduction is to control the sound field within the loudspeaker set-up. This means that the pressure and velocity waves originating from the virtual sources are to be synthesized as plane waves or as spherical waves. The targeted sound field would then be well defined, and the reproduced sound field can also be simulated, or even measured. Unfortunately, the errors in the synthesis of the sound field between the targeted and reproduced fields do not say much about the perceptual significance of the deviation. Sometimes a small difference in the wave field causes a large perceptual deviation, and a large deviation in the wave field may be perceptually irrelevant in some cases. However, the advantage of this starting point is that the reproduction techniques can be derived mathematically. — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 1902

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that wave-field error magnitude is unrelated to perceived deviation is counterintuitive and foundational: engineering metrics can’t substitute for listening evaluation in spatial audio.
• QUESTION: What determines which wave-field deviations matter perceptually? This seems underexplored, a gap between physical acoustics and psychoacoustics.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 1902
• XREF: connects to: Perceived sound direction and actual source direction need not coincide; Vision and sound expectations must concord for convincing audio-scene perception; Equalization adjusts sound by perceived timbre, not measured accuracy (+19 more)

Broader Connections

• Perceived loudness does not map one-to-one onto acoustic amplitude #exemplifies (0.90) — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 616
• Perceived loudness and physical sound intensity follow different, non-intuitive mathematical scales #exemplifies (0.90) — George Michelsen Foy, Zero Decibels, 53
• Sound reproduction quality depends on both physical acoustics and human perception #expands (0.85)
• Visual and contextual cues bias human judgments of sound quality #expands (0.85)
• Auditory perception of the same physical sound varies between individuals #expands (0.85)
• Perceived loudspeaker sound quality depends only on amplitude responses #contradicts (0.75) — Toole, Floyd E, Sound reproduction- the acoustics and…, 711