Quality assessment of auditory virtual environments

Abstract

Practical applications for auditory virtual environments (AVEs) are ever increasing. The achievable quality of AVEs has reached a level, where realworld problems can often be solved in a convenient way by using AVEs, meaning e.g. less expensive or more flexible than a real-world solution. Nowadays, the quality of AVEs is often measured in terms of their technical capacity to approximate the physical behavior of a real environment. As the design goals for AVEs shift from ``reproducing the physical behavior of a real environment as accurate as possible'' to ``stimulating the desired perception directly'' this comparative quality measure is no longer feasible. This paper describes parameters influencing the perceived quality of AVEs. Moreover, the dependence of perceived quality on the application is emphasized.