AES E-Library

Effect of Horizontal Diffusivity on Loudness

This study examines how the spatial characteristics of a sound field affect its loudness. In an experiment, listeners adjusted the gain of stimuli so as to match the loudness of a reference stimulus. The experiment was conducted using binaural stimuli presented over headphones – using stimuli that simulated the sound from eight sound sources evenly distributed in a circle around the listener. Four degrees of diffusivity were tested, ranging from a single active sound source, to all eight sources producing decorrelated sound with identical power spectra. Four power spectra were tested: broadband pink noise, and low-, mid- and high-frequency bandpass-filtered pink noise. The study finds that in modeling the binaural loudness summation of the diffuse stimuli, a binaural gain constant about 1 or 2 dB greater than that of the non-diffuse stimuli provides the least error.

Authors: Cabrera, Densil; Miranda, Luis
Affiliation: University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia
AES Convention:131 (October 2011) Paper Number:8487 Import into BibTeX
Subject:Loudness Measurement and Perception

Click to purchase paper or login as an AES member. If your company or school subscribes to the E-Library then switch to the institutional version. If you are not an AES member and would like to subscribe to the E-Library then Join the AES!

This paper costs $20 for non-members, $5 for AES members and is free for E-Library subscribers.

Learn more about the AES E-Library

E-Library Location: (CD 131Papers)   /131/8487.pdf

Start a discussion about this paper!