On Some Biases Encountered in Modern Listening Tests

Hedonic judgments are prone to many non-acoustical biases. Since audio quality evaluation involves, to some degree, hedonic judgments, the scores obtained from typical audio quality listening tests can be biased if the nonacoustical factors are not properly controlled. In contrast to hedonic judgments, sound character judgments are less prone to the non-acoustical biases, and, if appropriate acoustical anchors are used, can provide highly reliable and repeatable data. However, when listeners are asked to judge multidimensional attributes, like the overall spatial audio fidelity, the resultant data may exhibit a large variation and a multimodal distribution of scores. A possible solution to this problem will be discussed.

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