Institute of Sound and Vibration Engineering (ISAVE)
Refine
Document Type
- Conference Proceeding (23)
- Article (11)
- Researchdata (3)
- Part of a Book (2)
- Doctoral Thesis (1)
- Preprint (1)
Is part of the Bibliography
- yes (41)
Keywords
- Lautwahrnehmung (4)
- Psychoakustik (4)
- Raumakustik (4)
- Datenanalyse (3)
- Lautstärke (3)
- Maschinelles Lernen (3)
- Ästhetische Wahrnehmung (3)
- Akustik (2)
- Audiovisualisierung (2)
- DOAJ (2)
Department/institution
Evaluating the Effectiveness of Virtual Listening Tests for Balanced Armature Headphone Drivers
(2025)
Influence of mental effort on sound evaluations in virtual and real experimental environments
(2025)
Psychoacoustic research increasingly relies on virtual reality (VR) to account for the complexity of acoustic scenarios and enhance the ecological validity of laboratory findings. However, recent studies suggest that virtual environments can alter mental effort compared to real-world settings, for example, through increased perceptual complexity which in turn may affect auditory perception.This could bias experimental outcomes and compromise the ecological validity of studies conducted in VR. To investigate this, a 2 × 2 between-subjects experiment was conducted to assess whether VR environments increase mental effort and thereby influence auditory perception. A real office environment was visually reconstructed in Unity and presented to the participants via a head-mounted display (HMD) and compared to its real counterpart. Participants in both environments were asked to retrospectively rate the loudness and unpleasantness of dynamically rendered binaural office noise scenarios presented via headphones and to report perceived sound sources. Moreover, participants were divided into two groups to induce different levels of mental effort. One group was asked to listen only to the sounds, while the other performed the Stroop Color-Word interference test in parallel. The results show no significant difference in the overall induced mental effort between environment conditions. Furthermore, performing the Stroop test had an effect on loudness and unpleasantness that was mediated by subjective effort. The results also suggest that auditory jugment depend primarily on individual sound properties, regardless of the visual environment.
Supplemental material for https://doi.org/10.1051/aacus/2025062
To investigate loudness biases in the lab, where outdoor sounds are perceived as being too loud if reproduced with physically accurate levels in the lab, a listening experiment was conducted, where thirty-one participants visited a street and listened to the environmental sounds for one minute. These sounds were also recorded using a dummy head. Afterwards, participants listened to the recording in a quiet laboratory and adjusted its level as they remembered it. About half of the sample did this immediately, the other half about 20 min after the recording, during which the performed another listening tests. Afterwards, previous experience with acoustics, musical sophistication and noise sensitivity were assessed. The results revealed a mean gain adjustment of 8.9 dB below the original. The data uploaded here comprises participants gain adjustment, the recording levels averaged other A) the entire recording and B) the first and last 7.5s or 15s, respecitvely and all questionnaire responses as well as aggregate scores for musical sophistication and noise sensitivity, as well as a binary categorization of the respondent into laymen and experienced, based on their previous experience with acoustics. For sociodemographic information, participants age, sex and educational degree are reported as well.
Content
- 00_Description:
- Description of the data files
- Includes a list of explanation of the columns names in "data_questionnaires_aggregateLevels.csv
- data_questionnaires_aggregateLevels.csv
- Participants' adjusted recordings levels
- Several level and loudness aggregates of each participant's recording that were analyzed in the paper
- Participants' responses to the administered questionnaires
- level_envelopes.zip
- Archive with 31 CSV files containing level envelopes of each participant's recording.
- A-weighted and unweighted level envelope for the dummy head's left and right ear
- One-minute recordings with a temporal resolution of 125ms