An empirical examination of the evaluative utility of design auralization

This paper explores the degree to which subjective assessments of the acoustical properties of a real space can be reproduced by assessments that are based on computational auralization. Toward this end, three spaces with different functional and acoustical characteristics were selected. These spaces were evaluated by a group of test participants. A second group of test participants evaluated high quality auralizations of the spaces. The results of the two groups were compared to empirically determine if auralizations can reliably represent real spaces for acoustical quality evaluation purposes.