This is going to be a multipart review of a very interesting Audio Engineering Society (AES) paper that attempts to correlate some basic room acoustic parameters to subjective impressions for low frequencies in small rooms. For those inclined to read the full paper, it is:
"Improving the Assessment of Low Frequency Room Acoustics Using Descriptive Analysis", M. Wankling, Bruno Fazenda, and William Davies. AES Convention Paper 8311, November 2010. These same authors have done some other interesting and competant work in this area as well.
You can purchase this and related papers for a nominal fee from the AES website:
http://www.aes.org/e-lib/online/search.cfm
My aim here is to make the core results more accessable to interested readers who may not be familiar with the more acedemic methods, such as "Decriptive Analysis". I also offer my own commentary in addition to summarizing the authors' work.
In short, what they did was twofold:
So, if you are interested in the relationship of, for example "articulation" with room volume, and with overall subjective preference, this paper covers exactly that. Having read many of these sorts of acedemic papers, I can say that this one is very well done.
Next post will cover how the subjective verbal descriptors were determined, and what they are. Keep yer suspenders on...!
"Improving the Assessment of Low Frequency Room Acoustics Using Descriptive Analysis", M. Wankling, Bruno Fazenda, and William Davies. AES Convention Paper 8311, November 2010. These same authors have done some other interesting and competant work in this area as well.
You can purchase this and related papers for a nominal fee from the AES website:
http://www.aes.org/e-lib/online/search.cfm
My aim here is to make the core results more accessable to interested readers who may not be familiar with the more acedemic methods, such as "Decriptive Analysis". I also offer my own commentary in addition to summarizing the authors' work.
In short, what they did was twofold:
- Using a group of trained listeners, agree on a small but robust set of subjective verbal descriptors that together determine overall preference.
- These descriptors were used in listening tests, to investigate the relationship between real acoustical room parameters, the subjective descriptors, AND overall preference.
So, if you are interested in the relationship of, for example "articulation" with room volume, and with overall subjective preference, this paper covers exactly that. Having read many of these sorts of acedemic papers, I can say that this one is very well done.
Next post will cover how the subjective verbal descriptors were determined, and what they are. Keep yer suspenders on...!