H Wierstorf, C Hold, A Raake, "Listener Preference for Wave Field Synthesis, Stereophony, and Different Mixes in Popular Music," Journal of the Audio Engineering Society 66, p. 385-396 (2018). [ link ] [ paper ]

Bibtex

@article{Wierstorf2018a,
    title   = {Listener Preference for Wave Field Synthesis, Stereophony, and
               Different Mixes in Popular Music},
    author  = {Wierstorf, Hagen and Hold, Christoph and Raake, Alexander},
    journal = {Journal of the  Audio Engineering Society},
    volume  = {66},
    number  = {5},
    pages   = {385--396},
    year    = {2018},
    doi     = {10.17743/jaes.2018.0019}
}

Abstract

The mixing engineer and the reproduction system both influence the perception of a song by a listener. For unfamiliar music, the mix can significantly influence listener preferences. The goal of this research was to investigate the influence of the reproduction systems and mixing parameters by asking listeners for preference ratings in a paired comparison test. The study generated mixes of four different popular music recordings and introduced systematic changes to the wave field synthesis mix for one song. The mixing parameters were EQ, compression, reverb, and spatial positioning. Listeners rated their preference by comparing two channels with five channel stereophony and wave field synthesis using a circular array of 56 loudspeakers. Even when introducing relatively strong changes to the wave field synthesis mix, listeners still preferred that system most of the time. This preference was dependent on the actual content and might vary between different songs, or even song excerpts. The mixing condition disliked the most by listeners was a very wide arrangement of the foreground elements of popular music, such as vocals, snare and bass drum, and guitars. Overall, using a high number of loudspeakers is preferred by most listeners, and the differences between reproduction methods can have a larger influence than strong variations of single mixing parameters.

Supplementary material

The recorded signal feeds of the song Lighthouse are available at 10.5281/zenodo.55718. The metadata for the different positions are available at 10.5281/zenodo.61110. The reference mixes for all songs can be downloaded from 10.14279/depositonce-5173. In addition, the mix variations for the song Lighthouse are available at 10.5281/zenodo.61000. The binaural room scanning files for the binaural simulation of the used circular loudspeaker array are stored at 10.5281/zenodo.55572. All results from the listening tests, together with code for the statistical analysis and creation of all the figures from the paper is available for download at 10.5281/zenodo.1054525.