Visual cues of room size override what the ears actually hear.

Evidence

Interestingly, now that it is possible to provide a long reverberation time in a small room, via electronic reverberation enhancement systems, with good quality, people have found that long reverberation times in a small room sound “wrong” because the visual cues contradict the audio ones. That is, the listener, on the basis of the apparent size of the space and their experience, expects a shorter reverberation time than they are hearing. Apparently closing one’s eyes restores the illusion by removing the distracting visual cue! — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 1843

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the ventriloquism effect and other audio-visual integration phenomena where vision captures auditory localization.
• SEED: Angle: ‘Closing your eyes to hear better’ — how vision dominates audition in venues, and what that means for live music and VR audio.
• CANDY: Everyone has felt a room ‘sound wrong’; the trick of simply shutting your eyes to fix it is a perfect elevator anecdote.