The impact of audio spatialisation reproduction on the neurophysiological responses of music listeners

Haywood L, Hobern S, Nambu I, Epain N, Daffern H, Kearney G. The impact of audio spatialisation reproduction on the neurophysiological responses of music listeners. In: AVARIG 2026: Audio for Virtual and Augmented Reality and Immersive Games. Audio Engineering Society; 2026. Paper 482. Available from: https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=23374

@inproceedings{Haywood2026_23374,
  author = {Haywood, Laney and Hobern, Sam and Nambu, Isao and Epain, Nicolas and Daffern, Helena and Kearney, Gavin},
  title = {{The impact of audio spatialisation reproduction on the neurophysiological responses of music listeners}},
  booktitle = {AVARIG 2026: Audio for Virtual and Augmented Reality and Immersive Games},
  note = {Paper 482},
  year = {2026},
  month = jun,
  publisher = {Audio Engineering Society},
  url = {https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=23374}
}

TY  - CPAPER
TI  - The impact of audio spatialisation reproduction on the neurophysiological responses of music listeners
AU  - Haywood, Laney
AU  - Hobern, Sam
AU  - Nambu, Isao
AU  - Epain, Nicolas
AU  - Daffern, Helena
AU  - Kearney, Gavin
T2  - AVARIG 2026: Audio for Virtual and Augmented Reality and Immersive Games
M1  - Paper 482
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/06/30
UR  - https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=23374
PB  - Audio Engineering Society
LA  - en
AB  - Research into listeners emotional experience of different audio formats heavily relies on subjective, self-report measures. However, little is known about neural and physiological responses. As such, this feasibility study utilised electroencephalography (EEG), Heart Rate (HR) and Galvanic Skin Response (GSR), to explore the objective neurophysiological impacts of mono, stereo and spatial audio formats, across different music genres. In a withinsubjects design, participants listened to 27 randomised stimuli, each comprising of a 30 second music excerpt across the three audio formats. Results were not significant but trends did arise in the data. While mono formats were shown to elevate cognitive load and arousal, spatial audio elicited a decrease in physiological arousal, promoting a more relaxed state. However, the effects overall were very genre-dependent. Differences in physiological response between static and dynamic spatial reproduction of different music genres are discussed. While limited by the lack of subjective validation and sample size, this study highlights interesting relationships between audio format and the physiological responses of music listeners.
ER  -