Perception and Detection of Auditory Offsets with Single Simple Musical Stimuli in a Reverberant Environment

It is apparent that little research has been undertaken into the perception and automated detection of auditory offsets compared to auditory onsets. A study was undertaken which took a perceptually motivated approach to the detection of auditory offsets. Firstly, a subjective experiment was completed that investigated the effect of: the sound source temporal properties; the presence or absence of reverberation; the direct to reverberant level; and the presence or absence of binaural cues on the perceived auditory offset time. It was found in this case that: the sound source temporal properties had a small effect; the presence of reverberation caused the perceived auditory offset to be later in most cases; the direct to reverberant ratio had no significant effect; and the binaural cues had no significant effect on the perceived offset times. Measurements were conducted which showed that the -30dB threshold below the peak level of the slowest decaying frequency bands could be used as a reasonable predictor of the subjective results.