Quantifying headphone listening experience in virtual sound environments using distraction

Abstract

Headphones are commonly used in various environments including at home, outside and on public transport. However, the perception and modelling of the interaction of headphone audio and noisy environments is relatively unresearched. This work investigates the headphone listening experience in noisy environments using the perceptual attributes of distraction and quality of listening experience. A virtual sound environment was created to simulate real-world headphone listening, with variations in foreground sounds, background contexts and busyness, headphone media content and simulated active noise control. Listening tests were performed, where 15 listeners rated both distraction and quality of listening experience across 144 stimuli using a multiple-stimulus presentation. Listener scores were analysed and compared to a computational model of listener distraction. The distraction model was found to be a good predictor of the perceptual distraction rating, with a correlation of 0.888 and an RMSE of 13.4%, despite being developed to predict distraction in the context of audio-on-audio interference in sound zones. In addition, perceived distraction and quality of listening experience had a strong negative correlation of − 0.953. Furthermore, the busyness and type of the environment, headphone media, loudness of the foreground sound and active noise control on/off were significant factors in determining the distraction and quality of listening experience scores.