A Comparison Of Two Commercially Available Alternatives For Spatializing Audio Over Headphones In A Game Setting

Abstract: The video game industry is experiencing tremendous growth and developing games that stand out against the competition requires ever increasing production budgets. Graphics have been a selling point for video games for a long time, resulting in huge technical advancements in visuals. Audio has received more attention during the recent years, both in terms of sound-design and technical developments. This study compared two alternatives for spatializing audio over headphones in a game setting, while also comparing them against a more traditional stereo output. A commercial game was used to provide the game setting and participants rated the three different outputs based on three attributes and described their experience using Microsoft Product Reaction Cards. No statistically significant differences were found between the three outputs in any of the six rated attributes when doing a paired t-test or a Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test. Further analysis of frequency content, participants’ comments and Microsoft Product Reaction Cards were done to find out what sets the spatializing alternatives and stereo apart from each other.