Robustness of spatial averaging equalization methods: a statistical approach

Traditionally, room response equalization is performed to improve sound quality at a given listener. However, room responses vary with source and listener positions. Hence, in a multiple listener environment, equalization may be performed through spatial averaging of room responses. However, the performance of averaging based equalization, at the listeners may be affected when listener position changes. In this paper, we present a statistical approach to map variations in listener positions to performance of spatial averaging based equalization. The results indicate that, for the analyzed listener configurations, the zone of equalization depends on distance of microphones from a source and the frequencies in the sound.