Precedence effect and related phenomena in the median plane for short time delay

Abstract

The precedence effect (PE) of a direct sound (leading sound) and reflections (lagging sounds) and related phenomena in the median plane have been studied by some researchers. However, it is still not clear how the lagging sound arriving from the median plane affects the leading sound image, especially for short time delays that are relevant to early reflections in architectural spaces. This study investigates the conditions where the PE and the related phenomena such as the summing localization (SL) and split of the sound images (SSI) are observed in the median plane for short time delays below 10 ms. A psychophysical experiment with a mapping method is used to simultaneously observe the PE, SL, and SSI. The experimental results suggest that, for the time delay ms, a lagging sound from the median plane leads to a perception of single sound image but it has a more prominent influence on the perceived sound direction than that from the horizontal plane. Furthermore, for the range of time delay, the lagging sound from the median plane has a more prominent effect on the sound image direction as the time delay increases.