Perception of Reverberation in Small Rooms: A literature study

Reverberation is considered as one of the fundamental perceived properties of an acoustical space. Literature is available on the topic and currently a range of sciences have contributed in understanding the properties of reverberant sound fields and the relevant auditory processes. This paper summarises the current literature following a top-down approach. It identifies the perceptual aspects of reverberation and attempts to establish links to physical measures, focussing on small rooms. Results indicate that the current acoustical metrics often have limited correlation to the perceptual attributes of reverberation and conclusive measurement data is restricted, especially for small spaces. A proposal for perceptual-based experiments is presented, aiming to further understand the links between physical properties of rooms and their effects on perception.