Effect of masker orientation on masking efficacy in soundscape applications

Adding desired sounds to the sonic environment is one of the practiced soundscape implementation strategies, but its efficacy is still not fully understood. At present, soundscape researchers are evaluating the perceived improvement in pleasantness of the soundscape in the presence of pleasing sounds through listening tests in controlled environments. So far, investigation has been limited to a fixed listeners' orientation (facing the noise source), which is not representative of the real scenario where listeners are free to orientate in the sonic environment. Hence, to understand the effect of adding wanted sounds to a noisy environment at various listener's orientation, visual stimuli is reproduced in immersive Virtual Reality (VR) headsets paired with headphones capable of reproducing head-tracked 3D audio. The visual stimuli for VR is recorded with an omni-directional video camera rig, designed in-house, consisting of 6 cameras. Audio stimuli is recorded with an ambisonic microphone attached to the video camera rig. Subjective evaluation to determine the effects of various listeners' orientation is conducted in a controlled laboratory environment.