A living room for the evaluation of multiple auditory scenes

Abstract

The subjective evaluation of sound, demands adequate environments where, listening tests can be carried out. As the presence of multi modal stimuli always influences the perception of sound, there are two main solutions to handle this influence in an appropriate way. External stimuli beside the auditory stimuli could be eliminated as far as possible (e.g. dark rooms) or one creates environments close to the environment of interest. During autumn 2017, the transmission lab at Applied Acoustics has been redesigned as to two listening rooms. While one of the both will be used as standard listening room, the second is intended for research that concerns people in their home environment. Therefore, it was designed to resemble a living room, in which subjects are going to be exposed to varying auditory scenes. The MSc thesis will mainly focus in the documentation of the acoustic properties of the two laboratories, with a greater focus in the second room, relating to the intended research. In more detail, since very low frequencies will be used in order to simulate some of the auditory scenes, their acoustic properties need to be adequately documented in that region, in order for the researchers to be able to properly adjust their experiments. Moreover, the electro-acoustic equipment featured in the rooms, will be measured. For these purposes, two methods for impulse response extraction will be examined, in order to provide a first insight in the properties of the acoustic systems involved. Finally, by using these impulse responses, the reverberation times of both rooms will be estimated, as well as their behavior in the low frequency region. Summarizing, the goal of the MSc thesis is the documentation of the aforementioned listening rooms, their featured equipment and the corresponding methodology used in the measurements.