The preferred sound quality of three loudspeakers was rated by listeners within four domestic-sized rooms. Evaluations of binaural recordings/reproductions of the same loudspeaker/room combinations were also made. Both live and binaural measurements showed the room had statistically insignificant effects on listener loudspeaker preferences. In a second binaural experiment each loudspeaker was compared among the rooms. In contrast, the room was the main significant effect on listener preferences, while the loudspeaker was not significant. These contrasts in loudspeaker and room effects indicate that subjective measurements of sound quality are relative measurements strongly biased by the context in which the measured objects are compared.

Authors: Olive, Sean E.; Schuck, Peter L.; Sally, Sharon L.; Bonneville, Marc
Affiliations: National Research Council, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada ; Canadian Audio Research Consortium Audio Products International Ltd., Scarborough, Ontario, Canada(See document for exact affiliation information.)
AES Convention: 99 (October 1995) Paper Number: 4092
Publication Date: October 1, 1995
Subject: Perception and Subjective Evaluation

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.