FORMULAE DESCRIBING SUBJECTIVE ATTRIBUTES FOR SOUND FIELDS BASED ON A MODEL OF THE AUDITORY-BRAIN SYSTEM

This article reviews the background of a workable model of the auditory–brain system, and formulae of calculating fundamental subjective attributes derived from the model. The model consists of the autocorrelation mechanisms, the interaural cross-correlation mechanism between the two auditory pathways, and the specialization of the human cerebral hemispheres for temporal and spatial factors of the sound field. Typical fundamental attributes, the apparent source width, the missing fundamental, and the speech intelligibility of sound fields, for example, in opera houses, are described in terms of the orthogonal spatial factors extracted from the interaural cross-correlation function, and the orthogonal temporal factors extracted from the autocorrelation function, respectively. Also, other important subjective attributes of the sound fields, the subjective diffuseness, and subjective preferences of both listeners and performers for single reflection are demonstrated here.