Loudspeaker systems with more channels and with elevated loudspeakers are becoming more common. There is an opportunity for greater spatial impression with listeners surrounded in three dimensions. There is research showing the advantages of more loudspeakers and of 3D layouts over 2D layouts although it is not clear whether the cause of these improvements is the greater number of loudspeaker, their position, or both. In this paper two listening tests are presented that investigate the subjective diffuseness of a range of loudspeaker layouts. The first experiment was used to optimize the distribution of loudness between horizontal layers of loudspeakers to allow fair comparison between different layouts. The second experiment investigated the perceived diffuseness of a range of loudspeaker layouts chosen to critically assess parameters of layer-based loudspeaker systems as well as validate the results of the first experiment. The number of loudspeakers at head-height, the number of loudspeakers not at head-height, and the relative level between head-height and non-head-height layers were all found to be statistically significant in terms of perceived diffuseness. It was also confirmed that 3D loudspeaker layouts can have statistically greater perceived diffuseness than 2D layouts.
https://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=17983
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