A loudspeaker-based room auralisation (LoRA) system for auditory perception research

Most research on understanding the signal processing of the auditory system has been realized in anechoic or almost anechoic environments. The knowledge derived from these experiments cannot be directly transferred to reverberant environments. In order to investigate the auditory signal processing of reverberant sounds, a loudspeaker-based room auralisation (LoRA) system is proposed here. The LoRA system efficiently combines modern room acoustic modelling techniques with loudspeaker-based auralization (i.e., single loudspeakers, higher-order Ambisonics). Thereby, aspects of the auditory precedence effect are utilized to realise highly authentic room reverberation. This system aims at providing a flexible research platform for conducting auditory experiments with normal-hearing, hearing-impaired, and aided hearing-impaired listeners in a fully controlled and realistic environment. An overall description of the LoRA processing is first presented, followed by a battery of objective and subjective tests to demonstrate the applicability of the different components of the system. In the objective evaluation, monaural and binaural room acoustic measures (e.g., reverberation time, clarity, interaural cross correlation coefficient) were considered. The subject evaluation included speech intelligibility and distance perception measures.