Chamber music hall acoustics: Measurements and perceptual differences.

This study investigates the room acoustics of seven chamber music halls of various modern and historical architecture by means of objective room acoustic measures and a subjective listening experiment. The acoustic measurements were performed with heavy cloth covering the audience areas to simulate occupancy in the halls. A loudspeaker quartet was used for auralizations, which were reproduced in a surrounding loudspeaker array.

Perception of loudness and envelopment for different orchestral dynamics.

One of the main factors that makes listening to live concerts emotionally engaging is the dynamic changes in the music. Recent research has shown that concert hall acoustics can affect the perception of orchestral dynamics, but hardly any listening tests have focused on this interplay between the dynamics in music and hall acoustics. In this study, the influence of the orchestral dynamics is assessed with auralizations of musical excerpts of different dynamics (from pianissimo to fortissimo) in two listening positions within four different concert halls.

Recognizing individual concert halls is difficult when listening to the acoustics with different musical passages.

This article presents a listening experiment in which the listeners' task was to recognize the acoustics of a seat in a specific concert hall. Stimuli included two short passages extracted from a Beethoven symphony and samples of a solo violin auralized to four real concert halls. In each trial, listeners were presented with a reference and four alternatives with one correct match.