ON THE EFFECTS OF TIME-VARIANT SOUND FIELDS ON SUBJECTIVE PREFERENCE

Abstract Two experiments were performed to examine effects of modulated delay time of reflection on subjective preference. A time-variant model of an impulse response was applied for the sound stimuli. It consists of a direct sound and a single reflection whose delay time was modulated by a 0·1 Hz sinusoidal wave. The first experiment showed that the most preferred delay time of reflection is shortened when the delay time of reflection is modulated. It was found in the second experiment that the sound field with the modulated delay time of reflection is preferred to that with the fixed delay time of reflection especially in the case of performing changeful music with a small value of the effective duration of the autocorrelation function. Such a time-variant sound field may improve the subjective preference.