Spatial Hearing in Reverberant Environments: Main Theoretical Aspects

In recent years there has been a growing interest in the study of listener’s abilities to function in reverberant spaces where a sound propagates in multiple directions and is reflected from nearby surfaces. This article deals with theoretical considerations of spatial audition in the presence of reflections, in particular with the precedence effect. It is considered as a strategy that listeners unconsciously employ to cope with multiple arrays of directional cues in reverberant spaces. It refers to the auditory phenomenon that occurs when two similar sounds are presented from different locations with a brief delay between them and only one sound is heard whose perceived location is dominated by the first arriving sound.