The Method Of Virtual Listening Test On Loudspeaker Preference Rating Evaluation

A virtual listening test is a method for psychoacoustical research.It is used whereby the acoustical signals of the loudspeakers were accurately recorded and later reproduced through the equalized headphone for evaluation.A virtual listening test method can help control many listening test nuisance variables and ensure that listening condition are equal for every test subject.Most related studies focused on how to conduct different kinds of listening test through virtual listening test method.However,all of them could hardly obtain the same results as the live listening test through virtual listening test.According to the published studies,some excellent experiments could result in the correlation coefficient about 0.85 between live and virtual listening tests.The reason is that the research on the method of virtual listening test still is not complete and still leaves a lot to be desired.Hence,there is no standardized method for virtual listening test.In this paper,the presented studies mainly focused on the effect of recording and playback method in virtual listening test.A series of live and virtual listening test were conducted.The results obtained from live and virtual listening tests were compared.The analysis reveals the significant effect of recording and playback methods in virtual listening test.In this conducted studies,considering that the correlation coefficient only shows the relationship between the mean preference ratings,but not reveals any details about the descriptive statistical which could provide more information and guidance towards conducting accurate and valid virtual listening tests,the results of Cronbach's Alpha,Coefficient of variation(CV)and Least Significant Difference(LSD)comparison were compared to show the differences between the live and virtual listening tests.In our comparative analysis,the root cause of disparity between live and virtual ratings was presented.Based on the results of our study,this paper proposed a correction model of virtual listening test using hierarchical cluster analysis.Also five cluster analysis algorithms were compared.The results showed that correction model by hierarchical cluster analysis using furthest neighbor method exerted the most positive impact.At the end of this paper,some improvement methods of virtual listening test were proposed.The modified method provided the improvement of test reliability,reduction of rating dispersion,improvement of evaluation precision,how to reproduce and collect acoustic signal,and how to correct the results of virtual listening test.This study can provide more information and guidance towards conducting more accurate and valid virtual listening test.