Article
Application of spatial auditory masking of early reflections to measured spatial room impulse responses (en)
* Presenting author
Abstract:
This paper explores the effect of spatial auditory masking of early reflections, based on the model on the saliency of early room reflections previously proposed by Brinkmann et al., in measured spatial room impulse responses (SRIRs). The model has the goal to reduce the amount of data without loss of perceptible acoustic information of the room. The study uses previously published functions for the determination of the direction of arrival of reflections from measured SRIRs, the calculation of the auditory masking of the early reflections and the removal of the irrelevant reflections. The results of a listening study with 13 subjects show that the model can be successfully applied to measured SRIR with listener positions in front of and behind a directional sound source. It is possible to reduce the detected early reflections by up to 40% without affecting the perceived spatial characteristics. The amount of possible reduction depends on the type of listener-source constellation and the orientation of the sound source to the listener.