Training on the acoustical identification of the listening position in a virtual environment

This paper presents an investigation of the training effect on the perception of position dependent room acoustics. Listeners are trained to distinguish the acoustics at different listening positions and to detect mismatches between the visual and the acoustical representations. In virtual acoustic environments simplified representation of room acoustics are used often. That works well, when fictive or unknown rooms are auralized but may be critical for real rooms. The results show, that ten out of 20 participants could significantly increase their accuracy for choosing the correct combinations after training. The publication investigates the underlying processes of the adaptation effect and the reasons for the individual differences. The relevance of these findings for acoustic virtual/augmented reality applications is discussed.