Perception of room modes in critical listening spaces

Room modes are a recognised problem in small critical listening rooms and are known to cause colouration of sound reproduced within them.

Investigations on the causes and solutions for this problem have been carried out for some time. Interest in the topic has extended to loudspeaker manufacturers who have mainly concentrated in developing methods for controlling the loudspeaker-room interaction in order to ameliorate low frequency reproduction.

Compared to objective work on passive and active control methods, the study of the subjective perception of room resonances has been somewhat neglected. Available publications mostly concern the effects of single resonances, which are perhaps not fully representative of conditions as experienced in real rooms.

A study into the subjective perception of room modes is presented. The experimental methodology employs psychoacoustic techniques to study the perception of factors such as modal distribution, and effects of resonances on single tones. Results show that the subjective perception of room modes is strongly affected by temporal issues, and that changes exerted merely on magnitude frequency response are detectable but not likely to remove the effects of resonances for all listeners.

Furthermore, it is shown that a reduction of the modal Q-factor, associated with a reduction of decay rates, has a significant effect in decreasing the detection of resonances. Q-factor difference limen were evaluated for three reference decay characteristics corresponding to reference Q-factors of 30, 10 and 1. The limen were 6±2.8, 10±4.1 and 16±5.4 respectively, meaning that detection of changes to modal decay decreases with decreasing decay time.

These results may be used to define more perceptually relevant design guidelines for critical listening environments, and indicate target criteria for control techniques used in room correction. The outcomes of this investigation will have repercussions on the design of better rooms for critical listening.