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.
