Content Presence vs. System Presence in Audio Reproduction Systems

The auditory presence of a reproduced sound depends on its content and the characteristics of the system used. In this study, the former property is referred to as ¿content presence¿, while the latter is called ¿system presence¿. A psychoacoustical experiment was conducted to measure the presence of twenty-five stimuli, which consisted of five reproduction systems with five sounds. The five systems differed in their accuracy of sound localization, and included a binaural reproduction system and a monaural system. The five sounds were chosen due to their different content-presence based on our previous experiment. Herein the experiment was conducted using the method of Scheffe´s paired comparison. The results showed that for a high presence, the accuracy of sound localization is important. Moreover, it is found that the system presence is comparable to the content presence in audio reproduction systems.