Spatial audio for interactive hearing research

The use of sound field synthesis for hearing research has gained popularity due to the ability to auralize a wide range of sound scenes in a controlled and reproducible way. We are interested in reproducing acoustic environments for interactive hearing research, allowing participants to move freely over an extended area in the reproduced sound field. While the physically accurate sound field reproduction using sound field synthesis is limited to the sweet spot, it is unclear how different perceptual measures vary across the reproduction area and how suitable sound field synthesis is to evaluate them. To investigate the viability of listening experiments and provide a database for modelling approaches, measurements of binaural cues were carried out in the Simulated Open Field Environment loudspeaker array. Results show that the binaural cues are reproduced well close to the center, but exhibit more variance than in the corresponding free field case. Off center, lower interaural coherence is observed, which can affect binaural unmasking and speech intelligibility. In this work, we study binaural cues and speech reception thresholds over a wide area in the loudspeaker array to investigate the feasibility of psychoacoustic experiments involving speech understanding.