An experiment to determine the perceptual attributes of the experience of listening to a target audio program in the presence of an audio interferer was performed. The first stage was a free elicitation task in which a total of 572 phrases were produced. In the second stage, a consensus vocabulary procedure was used to reduce these phrases into a comprehensive set of attributes. Groups of experienced and inexperienced listeners determined nine and eight attributes, respectively. These attribute sets were combined by the listeners to produce a final set of 12 attributes: masking, calming, distraction, separation, confusion, annoyance, environment, chaotic, balance and blend, imagery, response to stimuli over time, and short-term response to stimuli. In the third stage, a simplified ranking procedure was used to select only the most useful and relevant attributes. Four attributes were selected: distraction, annoyance, balance and blend, and confusion. Ratings using these attributes were collected in the fourth stage, and a principal component analysis performed. This suggested two dimensions underlying the perception of an audio-on-audio interference situation: The first dimension was labeled "distraction" and accounted for 89% of the variance; the second dimension, accounting for 10% of the variance, was labeled "balance and blend."

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Spatial audio processes (SAPs) commonly encountered in consumer audio reproduction systems are known to generate a range of impairments to spatial quality. Two listening tests (involving two listening positions, six 5-channel audio recordings, and 48 SAPs) indicate that the degree of quality degradation is determined largely by the nature of the SAP but that the effect of a particular SAP can depend on program material and on listening position. Combining off-center listening with another SAP can reduce spatial quality significantly compared to auditioning that SAP centrally. These findings, and the associated listening test data, can guide the development of an artificial-listener-based spatial audio quality evaluation system.

The attributes contributing to the differences perceived between microphones (when auditioning recordings made with those microphones) are not clear from previous research. Consideration of technical specifications and expert opinions indicated that recording five programme items with eight studio and two MEMS microphones could allow determination of the attributes related to the most prominent inter-microphone differences. Pairwise listening comparisons between the resulting 50 recordings, followed by multi-dimensional scaling analysis, revealed up to five salient dimensions per programme item; seventeen corresponding pairs of recordings were selected exemplifying the differences across those dimensions. Direct elicitation and panel discussions on the seventeen pairs identified a hierarchy of 40 perceptual attributes. An attribute contribution experiment on the 31 lowest-level attributes in the hierarchy allowed them to be ordered by degree of contribution and showed brightness, harshness, and clarity to always contribute highly to perceived inter-microphone differences. This work enables the future development of objective models to predict these important attributes

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