Reverberation Time and Musical Emotion in Recorded Music Listening

The influence of room acoustic parameters on musical emotion has to a degree been studied musicologically and empirically. However, there remain large gaps related to limitations in emotion measures and aspects of acoustic setting, with various iterations of digital acoustic reproduction represented in research. This psychological study explores the ways in which systematic alterations to reverberation time (RT) may influence the emotional experience of music listening over headphones. A quantitative approach was adopted, whereby musical stimuli with parametrically altered RTs were heard over user headphones. These were compared for domain-specific musical emotions on the Geneva Emotional Music Scale (GEMS). The main findings showed that the RTs and related acoustic features did not have a strong effect on “Unease” or “Vitality” components of the GEMS, but rather longer RTs had a significant positive effect on aspects of “Sublimity” (i.e., “Nostalgia,” “Transcendence,” “Wonder”). These results suggest that subjective percepts beyond pleasantness or emotional impact are affected by reverberation-based manipulations to room acoustic sound. The study outcomes have particular relevance to recorded music with artificial reverberation, and create scope for complex interactions between reverberation time and emotion more broadly.