Virtual headphone testing cut switching time tenfold and improved rating consistency.

Evidence

Briolle and Voinier (1992) reported sound quality evaluations of 12 headphones made by 22 listeners using both real and virtualized versions. The correlation between the two sets of results was 0.93. The virtual method reduced the time switching time between two headphones from 5 s to 10 s to about 0.5 s, and it improved the consistency in listeners’ ratings. Similar results were produced using three different qualities of replicator headphones. — Toole, Floyd E, Sound reproduction- the acoustics and…, 1783

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

Related

• Headphone preference tests can be run virtually via equalization. (similarity 0.83)
• Headphone blind tests cannot use automated shuffling, so tactile cues leak into results. (similarity 0.82)
• Test fixtures meeting the same standard still differ in headphone measurements. (similarity 0.80)
• Physical headphone testing cannot be fully blinded because listeners feel weight and fit (similarity 0.80)
• Virtual acoustic presentation uses convolved room impulse responses with headphone inverse filtering (similarity 0.79)
• Virtualized loudspeaker playback can compete with real multi-speaker systems on listener preference. (similarity 0.79)
• Headphone measurements vary most between individuals at high frequencies. (similarity 0.79)
• Automated loudspeaker position switching improves listening-test reliability (similarity 0.78)
• Speaker wire and cables show negligible audible differences under controlled tests (similarity 0.78)