Perceptual thresholds for the effects of room modes as a function
of modal decay

Fazenda, BM; Stephenson, M; Goldberg, A

Abstract

Room modes cause audible artifacts in listening environments. Modal control approaches have
emerged in scientific literature over the years and, often, their performance is measured by criteria
that may be perceptually unfounded. Previous research has shown modal decay as a key perceptual
factor in detecting modal effects. In this work, perceptual thresholds for the effects of modes as a
function of modal decay have been measured in the region between 32 and 250 Hz. A test
methodology has been developed to include modal interaction and temporal masking from musical
events, which are important aspects in recreating an ecologically valid test regime. This method has
been deployed in addition to artificial test stimuli traditionally used in psychometric studies, which
provide unmasked, absolute thresholds. For artificial stimuli, thresholds decrease monotonically
from 0.9 s at 32Hz to 0.17 s at 200 Hz, with a knee at 63 Hz. For music stimuli, thresholds decrease
monotonically from 0.51 s at 63Hz to 0.12 s at 250 Hz. Perceptual thresholds are shown to be
dependent on frequency and to a much lesser extent on level. The results presented here define
absolute and practical thresholds, which are useful as perceptually relevant optimization targets for
modal control methods.

Citation

of modal decay. ˜The œJournal of the Acoustical Society of America (Online), 137(3), 1088-1098. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.4908217

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jan 22, 2015
• Online Publication Date: Mar 17, 2015
• Publication Date: Mar 17, 2015
• Deposit Date: Mar 23, 2015
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 5, 2016
• Journal: The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (JASA)
• Print ISSN: 0001-4966
• Electronic ISSN: 1520-8524
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 137
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 1088-1098
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1121/1.4908217
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/1.4908217
• Related Public URLs: http://scitation.aip.org/content/asa/journal/jasa/137/3/10.1121/1.4908217?aemail=author
• Additional Information: Projects : Non funded research