Impact of visual modality on acoustic assessment of rooms

In the context of the conception of a multimodal immersive environment aimed to support the task of assessing the acoustical quality of rooms based on numerical simulations, we study the relationship between image and sound. Auralias project aims to develop an immersive environment for a collaborative work between architects and acousticians combining 3D sound rendering and 3D view of the room model. In this study, we analyzed the impact of a room picture on the acoustic assessment. We chose reverberation as acoustic parameter. First, we confronted 70 subjects with a sound clip and asked them to assess the reverberation degree (control condition). Then, we divided the subjects into three groups and repeated the same judgment task. However, in the first group, subjects listening the sound clip were confronted with a room picture consistent with the sound. In the second group, they were confronted with a « distractor » room picture (no link with the sound). In the last group, they listened the sound clip without any room picture. Our results showed a positive impact of consistent pictures on reverberation assessment but we found no effect of distractor pictures.