Subjective and objective assessment of some reverberation enhancement systems

How much of a difference does active or passive variation of a room's acoustical conditions make? Electronic architecture and reverberation enhancement have become common in the pursuit of better acoustics in multipurpose auditoria by active means. New systems show promising results. The properties of several different installations both in the U.S. and Europe have been investigated. This has been done both objectively by measurement of omnidirectional and binaural impulse responses and subjectively by the use of binaural recording. The binaural recordings used anechoic music replayed in stereo on stage. These recordings were used in pair comparison tests to investigate the dimensions of audible difference between the halls, with and without active or passive treatment of the room response. The pair comparison tests were evaluated using multidimensional scaling. The results show that some systems are able to modify the acoustical conditions to a very large extent. Differences between various system settin...