In recent years, soundbars have seen a rise in interest from consumers of home audio. Such technology offers an alternative means to experience surround sound content compared to conventional discrete multichannel systems. This paper presents a subjective comparison between two soundbars—a discrete 5 channel surround system and a discrete stereo system for a range of content and listener experience—in order to evaluate how soundbar technology compares to conventional discrete systems. A mixed methods approach, Open Profiling of Quality, was used in order to deeper understand preference ratings for the various reproduction systems. The results show that the discrete surround system was significantly preferred to the soundbars for all content due to a combination of timbral and spatial factors.

Authors: Walton, Tim; Evans, Michael; Kirk, David; Melchior, Frank
Affiliations: Newcastle University, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, UK; BBC Research and Development, Salford, UK(See document for exact affiliation information.)
AES Convention: 140 (May 2016) Paper Number: 9592
Publication Date: May 26, 2016
Subject: Rendering, Human Factors and Interfaces

Click to purchase paper as a non-member or you can login as an AES member to see more options.

No AES members have commented on this paper yet.

Subscribe to this discussion

To be notified of new comments on this paper you can subscribe to this RSS feed. Forum users should login to see additional options.

Start a discussion!

If you would like to start a discussion about this paper and are an AES member then you can login here:
Username:
Password:

If you are not yet an AES member and have something important to say about this paper then we urge you to join the AES today and make your voice heard. You can join online today by clicking here.