Speaker
Description
The perceptual characteristics of early reflections in concert halls have been extensively studied using controlled experiments based on measured or simulated spatial room impulse responses (SRIRs). In contrast, the present study adopts an in-situ approach, in which participants were invited to the Detmold Concert Hall to evaluate perceptual changes induced by controlled modifications of the sound field. The hall’s wave field synthesis (WFS) system, consisting of 300 flat-panel loudspeakers, was used to introduce first-order early reflections. It was hypothesized that increasing early reflection levels would lead to measurable enhancements in perceptual attributes. Contrary to expectation, clarity decreased with increasing reflection level, indicating that both early and late reflections were affected by the modifications. Analysis of the SRIRs using the Spatial Decomposition Method (SDM) revealed an increase in late reflection energy, attributed to loudspeaker directivity. The hall’s WFS system is primarily designed for artificial diffuse reverberation, and the results highlight its limitations when used to modify early reflections. Despite these deviations, psychometric analysis revealed clear discrimination thresholds in the similarity task that varied across reflection configurations, whereas judgments of perceptual attributes (clarity, width, envelopment, and loudness) exhibited weaker trends.