To what extent does the mixing engineer’s listening environment influence the final experience of the home listener, especially regarding the role of reflections? A pilot study explores the effect of specular and diffuse lateral reflection on the perception of trained listeners. Reflections may strongly influence balance, equalization, dynamics, and reverberation. In contrast to earlier studies that used normal listeners, this study uses trained audio engineers to perform selected tasks in a variety of acoustic settings. A correlation was observed between the presence of strong lateral energy and an initial reduction of speed for performing a task. However, adaptation soon occurs, thereby restoring the subjects to normal accuracy and response time.

Authors: King, Richard; Leonard, Brett; Sikora, Grzegorz
Affiliations: The graduate program in Sound Recording, Schulich School of Music, McGill University, Montréal, Canada; The Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology, Montréal, Canada; Bang & Olufsen Deutschland GmbH, Pullach, Germany(See document for exact affiliation information.)
JAES Volume 60 Issue 12 pp. 997-1003; December 2012
Publication Date: January 30, 2013

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.