Proceedings of the 10th Convention of the
European Acoustics Association
Forum Acusticum 2023


Politecnico di Torino
Torino, Italy
September 11 - 15, 2023





Session: A21-01: Auditory Cognition in interactive Virtual Environments - Part II
Date: Thursday 14 September 2023
Time: 14:40 - 15:00
Title: Reverberation makes interior spaces appear larger
Author(s): D. Oberfeld, Experimental Psychology, Johannes Gutenberg-Universitaet Mainz, Wallstrasse 3, 55122 Mainz, Germany
N. Kalmbach, Experimental Psychology, Johannes Gutenberg-Universitaet Mainz, Wallstrasse 3, 55122 Mainz, Germany
C. Von Castell, Experimental Psychology, Johannes Gutenberg-Universitaet Mainz, Wallstrasse 3, 55122 Mainz, Germany
S. Boustila, School of Digital Arts, Manchester Metropolitan University, 14 Higher Chatham St, M15 6ED Manchester, UK
L. Aspöck, Institute for Hearing Technology and Acoustics, RWTH Aachen, Kopernikusstraße 5, 52062 Aachen, Germany
D. Bechmann, Université de Strasbourg, Laboratoire ICube, 300 Boulevard Sébastien Brant, 67412 Illkirch Cedex, France
Pages: 5003-5007
DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.61782/fa.2023.1045
PDF: https://dael.euracoustics.org/confs/fa2023/data/articles/001045.pdf
Conference proceedings
Abstract

The perceived width, depth, and height of interior spaces depend not only on the actual dimensions of the rooms but also on the brightness of room surfaces and other visual factors. Here, we measured the effect of the acoustic properties of the room surfaces on perceived size. Simulated rectangular rooms (light gray surface textures, no windows) with varying width and depth were presented on an HTC Vive Pro with head-tracking. For each combination of width and depth, one version with reverberant acoustics (mean RT60 = 1.03 s) and one version with damped acoustics (mean RT60 = 0.19 s) were simulated by varying the absorption coefficient of the surfaces. Binaural room impulse responses were generated using the room simulation software RAVEN (https://www.virtualacoustics.org/RAVEN/). 22 participants viewed the rooms on the HMD and listened to speech and sounds of musical instruments inside the simulated space, using dynamic binaural synthesis with head-tracking. Participants estimated room width and depth in units of centimeters. As expected and compatible with previous studies, the estimated width and depth were significantly higher for the reverberant compared to the damped version of the simulated rooms. The mean increase in estimated width and depth was 1.1 % (Cohen’s dz = 0.849) and 1.6 % (dz = 0.854), respectively.