Reproduction of Phantom Sources Improves with Separation of Direct and Reflected Sounds

In virtual acoustics or artificial reverberation, impulse responses can be split so that direct and reflected components of the sound field are reproduced via separate loudspeakers. The authors had investigated the perceptual effect of angular separation of those components in commonly used 5.0 and 7.0 multichannel systems, with one and three sound sources respectively (Kleczkowski et al. (2015b). In that work, each of the front channels of the 7.0 system was fed with only one sound source. In this work a similar experiment is reported, but with phantom sound sources between the front loudspeakers. The perceptual advantage of separation was found to be more consistent than in the condition of discrete sound sources. The results were analysed both for pooled listeners and in three groups, according to experience. The advantage of separation was the highest in the group of experienced listeners.