Room acoustics and presentation method alter how listeners perceive sounds

Evidence

It should not be concluded that listeners can always adapt to or normalize rooms to the extent shown here. As will be seen, there is always some adaptation, but in Experiment One it was enabled by the experimental method of comparing different loudspeakers within each room. Experiment Two is more closely related to real-life listening, in that the sounds of the room and the loudspeaker are combined. Listeners living in the room may develop enough familiarity with it to be able to discern some characteristics of loudspeakers being listened to, but having multiple comparison loudspeakers available is a very advantageous situation. The tests had the additional advantage of being in mono. — Toole, Floyd E, Sound reproduction- the acoustics and…, 547 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Equations 6.17 and 6.18 show that the reverberation time depends on the volume, surface area, and the average absorption coefficient in the room. However, the absorption coefficients of real materials are not constant with frequency. This means that, assuming that the room’s volume and surface area are constant with frequency, which is not an unreasonable assumption, the reverberation time in the room will also vary with frequency. This will subjectively alter the timbre of the sound in the room due to both the effect on the level of the reverberant field discussed earlier and the change in timbre as the sound in the room decays away. — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 1876 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Shared room acoustics let 1920 phonograph demos fool live audiences; Vision and sound expectations must concord for convincing audio-scene perception; Recorded room ambience may distract listeners from evaluating raw loudspeaker quality (+18 more)

Related

• Loudspeakers and rooms function together as a single audible system (similarity 0.91)
• Room differences dominate loudspeaker differences when listeners cannot adapt (similarity 0.90)
• Listeners need some room sound but its required amount is unknown (similarity 0.89)
• Large reverberant venues may compromise listeners’ ability to discern timbral qualities (similarity 0.89)
• Room reverberation time varies with frequency, altering perceived timbre (similarity 0.88)
• Listeners normalize room acoustics so a voice stays constant across radically different spaces (similarity 0.88)
• An audience’s breathing and perspiration dynamically alter a hall’s high-frequency acoustics (similarity 0.88)
• Listeners perceptually normalize familiar rooms to judge loudspeakers clearly (similarity 0.88)
• Room acoustics contaminate loudspeaker listening tests needing controlled environments (similarity 0.88)
• Reverberant fields typically color perceived sound with excess bass that equalization must fix (similarity 0.87)
• Optimal reverberation and strength targets differ sharply by music type (similarity 0.87)
• Humans adapt to room acoustics through training over hundreds of trials (similarity 0.87)
• Identical reverberation times can mask drastically different room sizes and acoustics (similarity 0.87)
• Human hearing adapts to different room acoustics to preserve timbre perception (similarity 0.87)
• Reverberant fields supply most perceived loudness in normal rooms (similarity 0.86)

Broader Connections

• Room differences dominate loudspeaker differences when listeners cannot adapt #corroborates (0.85) — Toole, Floyd E, Sound reproduction- the acoustics and…, 547
• Room reverberation time varies with frequency, altering perceived timbre #expands (0.80) — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 1876