Musical perception within a highly reverberant room

Abstract

The listening of the same musical composition generates a unique perception for every listener but, simultaneously, the concrete acoustic conditions of the chosen room have a decisive influence on the perceptions mentioned, so that they can fit in almost completely with its acoustic qualification. The aim of this study is to determine how the high reverberation of a room influences on the perception of a musical work. Because of this fact, a church with limited volume and high reverberation time has been chosen as the room (San Pedro, Cuenca, Spain) and a musical work has been composed, for voice and electroacoustics, specifically for this church; later on we have proceeded to the recording of the musical composition inside the church using a HATS; and, finally, a survey to a group of professional musicians has been carried out, once they have previously heard the recording with headphones. The results of the psychoacoustics analysis show that the high reverberation of the church carries a very low intelligibility and a confusing sound of the recording, which coupled with a background noise considered unacceptable drift in a general acoustic perception does not sound very supportive.