title: On the relative importance of spatial and timbral fidelities in judgments of degraded multichannel audio quality.
abstract: Mean opinion score ratings of reproduced sound quality typically pool all contributing perceptual factors into a single rating of basic audio quality. In order to improve understanding of the trade-offs between selected sound quality degradations that might arise in systems for the delivery of high quality multichannel audio, it was necessary to evaluate the influence of timbral and spatial fidelity changes on basic audio quality grades. The relationship between listener ratings of degraded multichannel audio quality on one timbral and two spatial fidelity scales was exploited to predict basic audio quality ratings of the same material using a regression model. It was found that timbral fidelity ratings dominated but that spatial fidelity predicted a substantial proportion of the basic audio quality.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Sound Recording, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey, GU2 7XH, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Francis
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Rumsey
authors.forename: Sławomir
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Zieliński
authors.forename: Rafael
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Kassier
authors.forename: Søren
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Bech
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000465:Algorithms; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D001309:Auditory Threshold / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D034381:Hearing Loss / Q000503:physiopathology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009146:Music; D011571:Psychoacoustics; D012044:Regression Analysis; D013016:Sound; D014833:Voice Quality