The role of room acoustics in 6DoF interactive audio for XR

Spacek L, Lee H, Johnson D. The role of room acoustics in 6DoF interactive audio for XR. In: AVARIG 2026: Audio for Virtual and Augmented Reality and Immersive Games. Audio Engineering Society; 2026. Paper 483. Available from: https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=23375

@inproceedings{Spacek2026_23375,
  author = {Spacek, Lubomir and Lee, Hyunkook and Johnson, Dale},
  title = {{The role of room acoustics in 6DoF interactive audio for XR}},
  booktitle = {AVARIG 2026: Audio for Virtual and Augmented Reality and Immersive Games},
  note = {Paper 483},
  year = {2026},
  month = jun,
  publisher = {Audio Engineering Society},
  url = {https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=23375}
}

TY  - CPAPER
TI  - The role of room acoustics in 6DoF interactive audio for XR
AU  - Spacek, Lubomir
AU  - Lee, Hyunkook
AU  - Johnson, Dale
T2  - AVARIG 2026: Audio for Virtual and Augmented Reality and Immersive Games
M1  - Paper 483
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/06/30
UR  - https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=23375
PB  - Audio Engineering Society
LA  - en
AB  - Binaural rendering in extended reality (XR) often employs static acoustic profiles that may not correspond to the users visual environment, potentially leading to cross-modal incongruence and the room divergence effect. However, the influence of acousticvisual mismatch on immersion and cognitive load in interactive six-degreesof-freedom (6DoF) environments remains unclear. This study investigated the impact of acousticvisual divergence on presence and subjective workload during real-time object interaction. An ITU-R BS.1116-3 compliant critical listening room was reconstructed at 1:1 scale in Unreal Engine 5. Ten critical listeners navigated the environment using a Meta Quest 3 headset while performing a 6DoF hand-tracking task. Spatial audio with virtual acoustics was rendered through OSC. Three acoustic conditions were evaluated: acoustically matched (RT60 = 0.21 s), anechoic (RT60 = 0 s), and highly reverberant (RT60 = 2.0 s). Presence and workload were assessed using the IPQ and NASA-TLX. Results showed a significant reduction in Spatial Presence only between the matched and highly reverberant conditions, while workload remained unaffected. The findings suggest that excessive reverberation disrupts environmental plausibility, whereas reflection absence can be partially compensated by visual and sensorimotor cues.
ER  -