ABSTRACT
In an attempt to understand the influence of the stimulus presentation method for a typical everyday listening task, performance in a dropped-rod length-estimation experiment, like that described in Carello et al. (2005), was compared for three cases. The cases are live presentation of stimuli, playback of binaural stimuli as recorded from an acoustic head and torso simulator, and diotic presentation of monophonically-recorded stimuli as recorded from a single microphone. The recording, playback, and live presentation of the stimuli all occurred in the same acoustically-normal room. Recordings were made in a position typical of where the test subject would be seated, thereby maintaining a similar impression of both the direct and reflected sound as allowed for in particular by the binaural-recording technique. To help minimize the influence of order effects, the sequence of rod drops within each block was systematically randomized.
