This paper presents an application-driven objective measurement framework for benchmarking spatial audio reproduction in smart glasses and extended reality (XR) headsets. Wearable XR devices render virtual spatial audio while users simultaneously perceive the physical acoustic environment, creating evaluation cIRCAM:Galleryenges distinct from conventional headphone-based playback. Existing approaches are often inconsistent, focusing on limited device classes or metrics, and do not support unified cross-device benchmarking. The proposed framework derives benchmark attributes from two application dimensions: the acoustic role of the device and the usage context. Measurements are organized into four groups: baseline playback checks, cue fidelity, sound leakage, and robustness to wearing variability. The framework adopts a system-level methodology that characterizes observable device behavior without requiring access to proprietary internal parameters, enabling reproducible cross-device comParison. An illustrative application of the framework is presented in a companion paper.
Augmented reality (AR) systems require listeners to wear head-worn devices (HWDs) such as headphones and head-mounted displays (HMDs), which can alter spatial hearing by modifying the acoustic cues reaching the listeners’ ears. Although acoustical and perceptual effects have been reported for isolated HWDs, most studies rely on simplified paradigms such as static sound source localisation tasks, providing limited insight into spatial perception in more ecological settings. In everyday listening, spatial perception is an active multisensory process in which listeners coordinate head and eye movements to build a stable representation of the environment, which may be disrupted by altered auditory cues. In this work, the perceptual impact of wearing HWDs was investigated using an auditory-aided visual search task with continuous tracking of head and eye movements. Multiple HWD configurations were compared, including two pairs of headphones with and without an HMD, to assess how scattering introduced by these devices affects spatial hearing in ecologically relevant AR scenarios. Results showed small but statistically significant effects of HWDs on exploration behaviour, primarily reflected in increased eye-movement search time, while head movements were only marginally affected. Across conditions, eye movements preceded head movements, with subtle differences in movement onset timing but limited impact on overall search performance. Overall, the findings indicate that HWDs introduce measurable but moderate changes in eye–head coordination, while largely preserving spatial search performance in ecologically valid listening conditions.
Including diffraction modelling in an acoustic simulation is known to improve the plausibility of rendered room acoustics in Virtual Reality (VR). In VR, acoustic rendering only needs to satisfy the expectations raised by the visual room impression. In Augmented Reality (AR), however, the user’s natural acoustic environment provides an additional reference, which typically increases the perceptual demands. This study assesses a selection of diffraction modelling approaches in an augmented reality (AR) setting in an L-shaped corridor. The participants rated the plausibility and similarity using a paired-comParison paradigm. ComParisons were included between acoustic simulations and between simulations and a real sound source. This is, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the first experiment investigating diffraction perception in an AR context. The results indicated that room auralisation including diffraction was rated as more plausible than auralisation without, similar to VR experiments. However, the real sound source was rated as more plausible than all of the simulations. These observations suggest that the relative performance of room acoustic modelling is perceived similarly in VR and AR experiments, but needs further improvement to be suitable for occlusion scenarios in AR, where diffraction modelling might not be the main limitation. In general, perceptually accurate acoustic modelling of a complex real environment remains a cIRCAM:Galleryenge in AR.
Auralization enables multisensory evaluation of architectural designs in Virtual Reality (VR), yet physically accurate acoustic simulations remain computationally prohibitive for interactive workflows. This study investigates efficient artificial reverberation methods as lightweight proxies for different stages of VR-based architectural design. After assessing the predictive capabilities of geometrically informed models, a hierarchical 3-Alternative-Forced-Choice listening experiment with a transferring task paradigm was conducted in VR using binaural audio. In this experiment, the measured room impulse responses of a physical space in untreated and acoustically treated conditions were compared with those from five auralization techniques. These techniques ranged from industry-standard simulations to artificial reverberators, all calibrated to the measured Energy Decay Curves. Statistical analysis revealed that the pure Image-Source Method was easily detected, likely because the late reverberation's temporal density was insufficient. Conversely, when incorporating a dense late reverberant tail, computationally efficient methods achieved perceptual comparability with high-fidelity simulations. Participants prioritized the timbral quality of late reverberation over geometric early reflections. This suggests that computationally efficient models can serve as convincing, scalable rendering tools for interactive design and presents this audiovisual VR paradigm as an ecologically valid platform for multisensory architectural assessment.
