Room Effect on Musicians’ Performance

Abstract

This chapter reviews the basics of music and room acoustics perception, an overview of auralization methods for the investigation of music performance and a series of studies related to the impact of room acoustics on listeners and musicians. The acoustics of the performance environment play a major role for musicians, both during rehearsals and concerts. However, systematic investigations of music performance are challenging due to the variety of conditions that determine the artists’ performance. Set-ups that allow controlled studies with variable but well-defined acoustic conditions have been developed over the last decades with increasing naturalness and applicability. Current auralization methods allow the reproduction of measured or synthesized room acoustics in real-time, thus enabling the perceptual assessment of room acoustics in laboratory conditions, isolating acoustics from other potential impacting factors. Common methodologies, as well as advantages and limitations of such virtual environments for the study of music and room acoustics perception are discussed in the first section. The virtual environments enable studies that help to explain why and how room acoustics can affect the listener subjective impact of a musical performance and to what extent listeners can be classified depending on their individual taste. Recent studies have shown that musicians systematically adjust their musical performance and adapt to the room acoustical conditions. The most important findings from these studies are presented in the second section. Methods and results from recent investigations of the impact of room acoustics on music performance are discussed in the third section of this chapter.