Adapting to A Manipulated Acoustic Distance Law

Scheer C, Brinkmann F, Schmitz L, von Berg M, Weinzierl S. Adapting to A Manipulated Acoustic Distance Law. In: AVARIG 2026: Audio for Virtual and Augmented Reality and Immersive Games. Audio Engineering Society; 2026. Paper 496. Available from: https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=23343

@inproceedings{Scheer2026_23343,
  author = {Scheer, Christian and Brinkmann, Fabian and Schmitz, Lucas and von Berg, Markus and Weinzierl, Stefan},
  title = {{Adapting to A Manipulated Acoustic Distance Law}},
  booktitle = {AVARIG 2026: Audio for Virtual and Augmented Reality and Immersive Games},
  note = {Paper 496},
  year = {2026},
  month = jun,
  publisher = {Audio Engineering Society},
  url = {https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=23343}
}

TY  - CPAPER
TI  - Adapting to A Manipulated Acoustic Distance Law
AU  - Scheer, Christian
AU  - Brinkmann, Fabian
AU  - Schmitz, Lucas
AU  - von Berg, Markus
AU  - Weinzierl, Stefan
T2  - AVARIG 2026: Audio for Virtual and Augmented Reality and Immersive Games
M1  - Paper 496
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/06/30
UR  - https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=23343
PB  - Audio Engineering Society
LA  - en
AB  - This study investigates whether humans can adapt to manipulated auditory distance cues in virtual environments. While listeners have been shown to adapt successfully to modified directional auditory localization cues, it remains unclear whether similar processes apply to distance perception, particularly when acoustic cues are modified in a non-physical way. Virtual reality (VR) systems often employ distance laws of this kind to improve the intelligibility of distant sound sources, which can introduce conflicts between auditory and visual information. To examine perceptual adaptation under such conditions, we modified a binaural, real-time room acoustic simulation engine with six-degrees-of-freedom rendering. The manipulation consisted of holding the direct sound level constant across distance while applying a distance-dependent low-pass filter. Over four consecutive days, participants completed a training protocol combining alternating testing phases with gamified training sessions. Results show that participants successfully adapted to the altered distance cues, with most of the learning occurring within the first two days. Initial exposure to the manipulation severely disrupted distance perception, rendering participants unable to make reliable judgments. Following training, however, perceived distance functions approached veridical performance for far distances, exhibiting slopes close to unity. In contrast, judgments at close distances remained highly variable, suggesting that the available spectral cues were insufficient for accurate estimation in this range. These findings demonstrate that auditory distance perception can be recalibrated through short-term perceptual learning, even when initial perceptual mappings are strongly degraded.
ER  -