Hearing impairment and reverberation preference: Results from a virtual sound space

Reverberation is regarded as a positive component of music perception and may lead to feelings of "envelopment" in well-designed auditoria. While relative reverberation time preferences are clear for young, normal-hearing (YNH) listeners, previous work indicates that older, hearing-impaired listeners (OHI) show less distinct preferences for reverberation time in music. OHI listeners have degraded temporal and spatial processing abilities that impact both reverberation perception and binaural processing of auditory stimuli. Previous work has been limited to earphone presentation, precluding an individualized head-related transfer function. This experiment employed these individualized auditory cues by evaluating reverberation preference in a virtual sound room for OHI and YNH listeners. Three symphonic excerpts, spatialized to simulate orchestral performance, were presented with a range of reverberation times. Listeners selected a preferred reverberation time in a series of paired comparisons. Thresholds for interaural coherence correlation (ICC)—a binaural processing measure—were obtained. Preliminary results indicate that YNH listeners have better ICC thresholds than OHI. Concordant with previous work, YNH listeners show relative reverberation time preference at roughly 2.5 s. OHI listeners show a different preference pattern than YNH. Results to date indicate that naturalistic listening cues may play an important role in music perception for OHI listeners. [Work supported by NIH.]