Subjective evaluation of room acoustic quality – statistical analysis

The room acoustic quality rating is at the end always subjective. The only question is how sharp is the criteria which should be met, what is the purpose of space and how important is the quality of listening for the listeners. With regard to this, judgment process is extremely complex. On the other hand, it is possible to do objective measurement relatively easily and quickly. In this paper the results of statistical analysis of two acoustically differently treated spaces subjective testing are shown. The number of test participants was 33, of which 8 had musical education. The musical sample duration was 16.5 min. The loudness level has been calibrated, i.e. it was identical in both rooms. Eighteen parameters were evaluated in two ways: with and without the impact of musical memory. These results were compared with hypothetical results based on the experience of the authors. The comparison of subjective judgment and objective measuring results is shown. The possibility of making judgments about the subjective assessment of quality of space based on objective measurements is also given. At the end, information about the statistical correlation of subjective assessments and objective measurements of room acoustic quality is shown.