Does room ambience have advantages over artificial post processed vocal ambience for recorded lead vocals in lowdynamic music: a preliminary study

Abstract: This senior thesis examines if there are any advantages to using room
ambience over post processed vocal ambience for recorded lead vocals in
low-dynamic music. The thesis contains a literature review, an analysis of
the techniques of several recording engineers and a listening test. The
literature review examines the use of effect on vocals in music. The
technique analysis makes use of published interviews from the book, The
mixing engineers handbook by B. Owsinski, examine the common practice of
mixing low-dynamic and is based on the interviews. The results from this
analysis produced the mixing constraints for the mixing of the stimuli’s for
the listening test. The listening test evaluates five different environments
in which vocals have been recorded. The five subjects in the listening test
have all a technical audio education. All environments have different
acoustical characteristics and include: a church, a song booth, an entrance
hall to an apartment, an anechoic chamber and a post processed song booth
with ambience effects. The results from the listing test show indications on
how humans perceive room size and offer insight into the positive and
negative affects of the perceived room size, the amount of volume,
intelligibility, reflections and which one of the environment are most and
least preferred and why. The conclusion of this thesis is that preliminary
findings suggest that there could be an advantage of using room ambience
over post processed ambience on lead vocals.