Room reflections improve the ear’s ability to hear resonances in playback.

Evidence

Reflections also increase sensitivity to mediumand low-Q resonances, apparently as repetitions of the direct sound, offering the hearing system additional “looks” to gain more information. Toole and Olive (1988) reported that the repetitions (reflections) necessary to increase our sensitivity to resonances can be either in the recorded sounds themselves or contributed by the listening room. When listening through headphones or in a dominant direct sound field (a very dead room) we are less sensitive to lowand middle-Q resonances. This would appear to be a factor in subjective assessments of headphone sound quality, which will be discussed in Chapter 15. It is also a factor in recording control rooms, many of which strive to eliminate reflections, and where close (near-field) listening is common. These are situations in which the recording engineers will hear less timbral enrichment than typical consumers. Adding some electronic reverberation “sweetens/enriches” the sound, though, because the desired repetitions can be in the listening room or in the source material. — Toole, Floyd E, Sound reproduction- the acoustics and…, 497

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s broader interest in psychoacoustic models — this is about how the listening environment shapes what the ear can detect, relevant to both headphone and room-based reproduction.