Article
Hearing and Feeling: Immersion in Audio (en)
* Presenting author
Abstract:
Spatial audio and virtual acoustics are concerned with recreating or synthesizing sound fields that produce sensations similar to those experienced in natural spatial hearing. This is achieved by reproducing relevant physical properties of a sound field as well as certain perceptual cues. Whilst analyzing these objective metrics, current research is also concerned with how sensory cues evoke higher-level reactions in a cognitive and emotional sense.In this context, the notion of immersion is understood as a psychological construct – the definition of immersion thus lies in the domain of psychology, as does the development and validation of experimental paradigms used to assess it. The role of acoustics and audio research, on the other hand, is to examine how measurable sound field properties are related to immersive experience beyond basic perceptual attributes.This pre-colloquium reviews current results in spatial audio research related to immersive auditory experience, including recent research by the Institute of Communications Technology at Leibniz University Hannover. Key concepts concerning the topic of immersion in audio are discussed on the basis of insights from the research project Richard Wagner 3.0 in which immersive musical experience in multichannel loudspeaker reproduction was investigated.