Article
Can the Perceived Spatial Impression of Classical Recordings Be Predicted by Audio Descriptors? (de)
* Presenting author
Abstract:
The perceived spatial impression is an important factor in the aesthetic appreciation of classical music recordings. Crucial aspects of spatial perception can be described by the attributes ensemble width, depth, envelopment, and reverberation duration. In a listening experiment, a sample of 30 experts rated 24 orchestra recordings by these attributes. To compare these ratings to signal-related measures of spatial impression, an audio descriptor for the interaural cross-correlation coefficient in music recordings was chosen as a measure of perceived ensemble width. A second algorithm estimated the reverberation time from decay segments in the recorded music. Linear mixed-effects models were then used to test whether these two descriptors, combined with other audio features related to timbre, are suitable for predicting participants' ratings of the perceptual attributes. Overall, results confirmed that the used signal-related measures can indeed predict perceptual attributes, with 41% of rating variance explained in the case of reverberation duration. By contrast, these objective measures turned out to be less accurate predictors of the perceived ensemble width, with a variance explanation of 21%. The study thus can be regarded as a starting point for further studies aiming to predict the perceived spatial impression in music recordings.