Differences in speech intelligibility in noise under Ambisonics-based virtual acoustic environments with varying sound recording/rendering methods

The present study investigates the differences in speech intelligibility in noise under Ambisonics-based virtual acoustic environments realised by various recording/rendering methods. Subjective listening tests were conducted under four different implementations of Ambisonics-based virtual acoustic environments reproducing a seminar room using different modes of recording and rendering techniques. For recording, both first and higher order Ambisonics microphone arrays were utilised while for rendering headphones (binaural) and 32-ch loudspeaker array were used. The results were also compared against the data collected in the real room. The experimental results suggest the speech intelligibility under virtual acoustic environments does not differ significantly regardless of the modes of recording and rendering, however it was generally lower than that in their original room. The effect of spatial release from masking was also observed under the virtual acoustic environments when either/both the higher order Ambisonics microphone array or/and the 32-channel loudspeaker array were utilised for the implementation, however, it was limited to the case when the speech source was located close to the listener.