A Preliminary Study on the Effect of Spatial Sound Reproduction based on Physiological Responses and Facial Expressions of the Listener

Spatial audio systems have received nowadays great attention not only from the academic sector but also from the market. Many techniques have been studied for the creation of an immersive scenario, but the development of a large zone, where more than one listener can perceive an immersive audio experience, is based on the use of multichannel approaches and sound field technologies. In this context, the presented study aims at an objective analysis of the listeners' sound experience based on their physiological responses and facial expressions to recognize variations in the subject mental and physical status and in their emotional reactions. Several experiments have been conducted using an immersive loudspeakers sphere installed in a semi-anechoic chamber exploiting Ambisonics technology and monitoring the listeners with a camera-based system equipped with a Facial Coding (FAC) and an advanced multimodal acquisition system to measure different physiological signals.