Paper Session 6a: Immersive Media & 3D Audio

Session Chair: Henrik von Coler

Paper abstracts

Felipe Otondo and Leonardo Santos: “Listening Across Spaces: Perceptual Evaluation of an Ambisonics-Based Sound Installation”

This paper explores how immersive listening to natural soundscapes is shaped by the spaces in which it unfolds. Using second-order Ambisonics field recordings rendered through a third-order Ambisonics decoding scheme, five natural soundscape excerpts were reproduced over calibrated 16-loudspeaker Genelec arrays in two contrasting venues: an acoustically controlled laboratory and an untreated museum gallery. Listener evaluations addressed presence, envelopment, timbral clarity, stability and depth using a perceptual framework grounded in recent immersive audio literature. The results reveal distinct perceptual profiles across venues, where spatial precision emerges in controlled conditions and reverberation contributes to a more diffuse sense of overall immersion in the museum. The study highlights immersion as a situated experience shaped by sound content, room acoustics, and reproduction conditions, with implications for artistic sound installations and exhibition design

Yu Chia Kuo: “Tree Rings: Ecological Memory and Linguistic Traces in an Immersive Dome Composition”