Influence of spatial complexity and room acoustic disparity on perception of quality features using a binaural synthesis system

This contribution presents investigations on the influence of scene complexity and room acoustic disparity on the perception of different quality features using a binaural headphone system. The quality features “spatial presence” and “listener envelopment” are investigated next to “perceived externalization” and “localization” of an auditory event. The test uses three different rooms with distinct room acoustic characteristics and several scenes with different spatial complexity. The work addresses the question if the quality features can profit by the different audio scenes or not. The results show that spatial presence is influenced by spatial complexity while room acoustic disparity influences listener envelopment. Furthermore, externalization and localization are not affected by spatial complexity regardless of the personalization method used for binaural synthesis.