Crispness, speech intelligibility, and coloration of reverberant recordings played back in another reverberant room (Room-In-Room)

This work examines the acoustical and perceptual consequences that can be found in a transfer chain consisting of a sound recorded in one room which is played back over a loudspeaker in another room. The total resulting "Room-In-Room" (RinR) response can be modelled as a convolution of the Room Impulse Response of the first and second room. Due to the convolution an increase in the reverberation time, pulse density, and a change of the temporal envelope of the early reflections can be observed, compared to a single room. In the spectral domain, the convolution results in an increase in spectral modulation strength, responsible for coloration. The listening test investigating the perceptual consequences of RinR found a decrease in perceived crispness due to reproduction in a playback room, especially for highly reverberant conditions. When within normal sized rooms the reverberation time and total source-receiver distance were kept constant, RinR and a single room condition showed no reduction in crispness. On the other hand, a strong increase in the perceived coloration was measured. Furthermore, a decrease in speech intelligibility has been found for RinR conditions, compared to single rooms (Speech Reception Threshold of 2-3 dB).