THIS PRESENTATION IS CANCELLED (PAPER IS AVAILABLE). On loudspeaker rendering of auditory distance in higher order Ambisonics

In this paper we investigate the perceived distance of sound sources rendered over loudspeaker arrays. We consider the perception of sound source distance with sources rendered within an array of loudspeakers as well as beyond the loudspeaker array radius. In particular, we explore this perception with Ambisonic soundfields up to 3rd Order. Sources are rendered for distances ranging from 0.2m to 8m and soundfields are presented over a 16 channel spherical loudspeaker array. 10 subjects are asked to gauge the source distance of female speech and pink noise bursts for each Ambisonic order. Test stimuli are created from measurements of 1st order spatial impulse responses in a reverberant room and their encoding to higher order spherical harmonic representations using the Directional Audio Coding methodology. Analysis of variance of the results demonstrates that the perception of source distance is largely independent of the Ambisonic order and more-so dependent on the monoaural cues of level difference and direct-to-reverberant ratio. Sound source distance without reverberation for each spatialisation method is also presented for comparison. It is shown for the rendered spatialisation methods, that the perception of distance is more dependent on relative loudness and source association than on wavefront curvature.