This paper investigates the perceptual variation of three spatial audio attributes in an automotive environment. In-situ listening tests were conducted to assess the horizontal localisation accuracy, surroundedness and source width of the audio system in the vehicle cabin, for both real and panned sound sources. The results show a general decrease in localisation accuracy as the position of the source changes from front towards the back of the car, but also highlight a few drawbacks of using panning methods which have a small sweet spot. The envelopment assessment showed that decorrelation of the sound sources significantly increases the perception of surroundedness, and it was also found that virtual re-panning of sources may be effective in increasing the surroundedness for continuous stimuli. The source width assessment showed that the panned stimuli did not exhibit a large variation in perceived width, It was, however, observed that the width of the individual audio channels showed a strong dependency on the horizontal angle. The results presented in this paper contribute to the further development of objective metrics suitable to predict the perceptual impression of individual spatial attributes in an automotive environment.
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