The Influence of the Measurement Chain on the Impulse Response of a Reverberation Room and Its Application Listening Tests

There are many objective parameters of the room impulse response which we can calculate that describe its acoustic field. The room impulse response can also be used to provide listening tests using the convolution technique. The aim of this work is to consider the influence of the impulse response measurement chain on objective numerical parameters and on the subjective perception of listeners. This article shows the impulse response measurement results obtained in the reverberation room using not only commonly known measurement chain elements but other elements, too. Standard components such as an omni-directional source and measurement microphone, as well as a consumer active loudspeaker and various audio recording stereo microphone pairs were used. The results are compared taking into consideration calculated numerical parameters and the application of calculated impulse responses to subjective listening tests. To determine the applicability of impulse responses to psychoacoustic listening tests, a preliminary listening test using headphones was carried out on a selected group of listeners. The audio test material consisted of samples of choral music and speech recorded in an anechoic room and convolved with previously analyzed impulse responses. This article shows how big the differences of subjective listener feelings are for different acoustic transducers.