Acoustically-driven spatial assessment of enclosed spaces
* Presenting author
Abstract:
Sound reflections and the resulting reverberation in enclosed spaces are often considered hindrances to human auditory perception due to their detrimental effects on speech perception and directional localisation. When it comes to acquiring knowledge about a spatial environment, however, their evaluation by the auditory system is essential, particularly when visual cues are unavailable (e.g., in the absence of light or in blind individuals). External and virtual (such as in acoustically augmented reality) sound sources as well as self-generated (echolocation) sounds can all give rise to acoustic cues that aid spatial awareness, orientation and navigation in rooms.In our current experiments, we investigate the capabilities of human listeners to acquaint themselves with the boundaries of unseen rooms in various purely acoustical scenarios. For maximum control over the experimental conditions, we have developed liveRAZR, a real-time implementation of the well-established RAZR system for room-acoustical simulation (Wendt et al., J Audio Eng Soc 62, 2014). This software can auralise moving sound sources and low-order reflections accurately in time and space (both binaurally and via loudspeaker arrays), while late reverberation is approximated with a feedback-delay network. The system can support the generation a wide range of naturalistic stimuli relevant to auditory spatial cognition.