Perception of speech uttered as speaker faces different directions in horizontal plane: Identification of speaker’s facing directions from the listener

Abstract

The perception of speaker’s facing directions is reflected radiation characteristics, which have an important role particularly in the immersive media. In the current study, we investigated the identification of speaker’s facing directions through two experiments: one with (Exp. A) and one without (Exp. B) differences in loudness, targeting the horizontal plane at 0˚, 45˚, 90˚, 135˚, and 180˚. The results of Exp. A suggested that participants mainly relied on loudness to identify speaker’s facing directions, whereas Exp. B suggested that identification could be judged from some acoustic cues such as the spectral component of the sound instead of loudness.