Room acoustics should be described with perceptual rather than physical values

Evidence

Room acoustics uses mostly physical values. However, room acoustics should also describe the conditions leading to good hearing in a room. Because hearing characteristics are described by psychoacoustical data and values, it seems reasonable to introduce these values into the description of room acoustics. This often means that temporal and spectral effects should be described using total loudness as a function of time, or the three-dimensional distribution of specific loudness versus critical-band rate pattern as a function of time. In addition to that, other psychoacoustical values such as fluctuation strength, partial masking or sharpness, can be used to describe the influence of room acoustics on the characteristics of the sound at the place of a listener. — Professor Dr.-Ing. Hugo Fastl, Professor Dr.-Ing. Eberhard, Psychoacoustics- Facts and Models, 2055

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• DEFINE: Introduces the idea that perceptual metrics (loudness-over-time, specific-loudness patterns, sharpness, fluctuation strength) are the right vocabulary for room acoustic quality.
• SEED: Potential essay: ‘Why concert hall design fails without hearing science’ — physical vs perceptual measurement of architectural acoustics.

Related

• Room acoustics should incorporate psychoacoustic not merely physical metrics (similarity 0.94)
• The listening room, not the loudspeaker, determines perceived bass quality. (similarity 0.83)
• Acoustically acceptable rooms require neutral loudspeakers plus acoustical treatment (similarity 0.83)
• Room acoustics dominate perceived bass response below roughly 250 Hz (similarity 0.83)
• Psychoacoustics quantifies physical sound signals into perceived auditory attributes (similarity 0.83)
• No single ideal listening room acoustic exists because humans adapt to room differences (similarity 0.83)
• The direct, on-axis sound dominates perceived loudspeaker quality in rooms. (similarity 0.82)
• Loudness as perception can never be directly measured physiologically (similarity 0.82)
• Perceptual hearing properties map onto objective signal analysis quantities (similarity 0.82)
• Room acoustic design must begin with speaker placement decisions (similarity 0.82)
• Human hearing adapts to different room acoustics to preserve timbre perception (similarity 0.81)
• Loudspeaker quality depends on off-axis radiation because rooms reflect it (similarity 0.81)
• Loudspeakers and rooms act as a combined system that cannot be judged separately (similarity 0.81)
• Sound quality judgments depend on listener context and expectations (similarity 0.81)
• Detailed early-reflection structure matters as much as reverberation time for perceived acoustics (similarity 0.81)