Perceptual discrimination of cardioid vs omni microphone polar pattern recorded in an acoustically dampened space for lead vocals in pop music

Abstract: An investigation was made to see whether experienced listeners were able to make a perceptual discrimination between vocals recorded with a cardioid- opposed to an omni- polar pattern microphone in an acoustically dampened space. The participants were also asked to make polar pattern preference judgements based on sound quality attribute assessments, set out to find suitable parameters for describing polar pattern differences in terms of sound quality. Two different test groups consisting of eighteen experienced listeners (sound engineers and vocalists) conducted a listening test divided in to two parts. First, a forced choice ABX double blind test investigated if a perceptual discrimination could be made between vocals recorded with a cardioid- opposed to an omni polar pattern microphone in an acoustically dampened space. The ABX test showed significant results for both groups by using the binomial test. Further, an AB7-test was used to see if any microphone polar pattern preference could be found among the participants by asking what pattern, they thought, produced the best sound quality for six individual trials, based on four evaluation attributes. No common significant polar pattern preference could be found for either of the two groups. On individual basis, two of the participants consistently preferred the same polar pattern for all of the six trials. The participants were also asked to perform sound quality attribute assessments set out to find suitable parameters for describing polar pattern differences in terms of sound quality. The results were analyzed in pairs, using t-tests (within subjects design). None of the attributes turned out to be a significant event, thus failing to suggest them as being suitable candidates for evaluating sound quality for this particular experiment.