The Effects of the Depth and Width of an Ambience Microphone Array on Perceived Depth, Width and Listener Envelopment

摘要

This paper presents a subjective study that investigated the effects of the depth and width dimensions of a 4-channel ambience microphone array on perceived environmental depth (ED), environmental width (EW) and listener envelopment (LEV). Test stimuli were reverberant recordings made using four backward-facing cardioid microphones with varying depth and width dimensions (0.5m, 1m and 2m). Listening tests conducted using four loudspeakers ±30° and ±120° found that the array depth had no significant effect on either ED, EW or LEV. The array width effect was significant on all of EW, ED and LEV (1m = 2m ＞ 0.5m), with ED significantly dependent on the type of sound source. From this, a new microphone array for 3D ambience recording is proposed.