Difference limen for reverberation time in auditoria

Tsolias, A; Davies, WJ

Abstract

The smallest change in reverberation time that can be perceived in a concert hall has been measured. Five existing halls with average reverberation times varying between 0.89 and 2.3 s were simulated in detail with Bose room acoustic modelling software. The computer models were verified against acoustic measurements in the real halls. The models were then adapted to reduce the reverberation time in small steps and auralised with anechoic speech and music to generate a set of listening test stimuli. A Bose near-field rendition system was used to reproduce the simulated halls to ten listeners who made paired comparison judgements on the changing reverberation. The method of limits was adopted for the listening test, with a two-alternative forced-choice paradigm. An analysis of variance in the difference limen results was conducted for factors hall, subject, direction and motif. The bulk of the variance was due to the factor hall alone. ¬When the difference limen are expressed as a fraction of the hall RT, then the variance is greatly reduced. This lends confidence to a single-figure difference limen of 3.2% +/- 0.6%. The result will be useful to those who design, simulate or auralise auditoria.

Citation

Tsolias, A., & Davies, W. Difference limen for reverberation time in auditoria. Presented at Forum Acusticum, Krakow, Poland

• Presentation Conference Type: Other
• Conference Name: Forum Acusticum
• Conference Location: Krakow, Poland
• End Date: Sep 12, 2014
• Publication Date: Sep 7, 2014
• Deposit Date: Jul 10, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: Dec 1, 2020
• Publisher URL: http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-84953299829&partnerID=MN8TOARS
• Additional Information: Event Type : Conference