Evaluation of sound quality, boominess, and boxiness in small rooms

Adam Weisser*, Jens Holger Rindel

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

6 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The acoustics of small rooms have been studied with emphasis on sound quality, boominess, and boxiness when the rooms are used for speech or music. Seven rooms with very different characteristics were used for the study. Subjective listening tests were made using binaural recordings of studio-produced music and anechoic speech. The test results were compared with a large number of objective acoustic parameters based on the frequency-dependent reverberation times (RT) measured in the rooms. This has led to the proposal of three new acoustic parameters, which have shown high correlation with the subjective ratings. The classical bass ratio definitions showed poor correlation with all subjective ratings. The overall sound quality ratings gave different results for speech and music. For speech the preferred mean RT should be as low as possible, whereas for music a preferred range of between 0.3 and 0.5 s was found.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)495-511
Number of pages17
JournalAES: Journal of the Audio Engineering Society
Volume54
Issue number6
Publication statusPublished - Jun 2006
Externally publishedYes

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