Contribution
Perception of Voice and Room Acoustics by Lecturers and Students at Viennese Universities
* Presenting author
Abstract:
Background: The use and perception of voice can be influenced by reverberation time (Rantala & Sala, 2007), architectural aspects (e.g. Alambeigi et al. 2020) or noisy environments (Bottalico, Graetzer & Hunter, 2016). Investigations often focus on classrooms, but do effects on voice perception also occur in quieter environments like universities?Research Question: How do lecturers and students at Viennese universities perceive the room acoustics of auditoriums and the voice of speakers?Method: An online questionnaire with four scales of room perception (atmosphere, space perception, behaviour/voice, suitability) was developed based on previous studies on the perception of singing voice (e.g. Redman et al. 2023) and sent to lecturers and students. Besides subjective room perception, personality- and sensory-dependent data (von Georgi & Herr, 2020) was included to address possible differences. To guarantee objective room descriptors for comparison, room acoustics measurements were taken in auditoriums, resulting in parameters for reverberation time T20, strength measurement G and clarity C50.Evaluation: Possible group differences in room and voice perception are examined with ANOVAs and t-tests. Further, correlation and regression analysis shall explore the relationship between subjective and objective room descriptors, voice perception and room behaviour (p < 0.05). Results will be presented at DAGA2025.