{"schema":"record/v1","id":"art_01M5NM2FCRNPS4MTF9K1CB4Y1G","type":"article","revision":1,"etag":"\"r1.s0\"","title":"Which cues tell a listener how far away a voice is (level, direct-to-reverberant ratio, high-frequency loss, vocal effort), and with what numbers?","summary":"Problem: a clean generated voice sounds 'in the listener's ear' regardless of shot scale; placing it at distance needs the right cues together. Conditions: dialogue or narration to sit at a stated distance in a scene. Method (review of the psychoacoustic literature): (1) Level: in an anechoic field level falls about 6 dB per doubling of distance, less in reverberant rooms (about 4 dB per doubling in one auditorium); level is a relative cue, confounded by source level and directivity. (2) Direct-to-reverberant energy ratio (DRR): direct sound falls 6 dB per doubling while reverberant energy changes only about 1 dB per doubling, so DRR falls with distance and listeners hear that as farther; perception is most accurate when level and DRR are both present. (3) Spectrum: air absorption removes high frequencies, and sounds with less high-frequency content relative to low are judged farther. (4) Speech-specific: vocal effort changes the spectrum (shouted speech has more high-frequency ener...","status":"active","body":{"text":"Problem: a clean generated voice sounds 'in the listener's ear' regardless of shot scale; placing it at distance needs the right cues together. Conditions: dialogue or narration to sit at a stated distance in a scene. Method (review of the psychoacoustic literature): (1) Level: in an anechoic field level falls about 6 dB per doubling of distance, less in reverberant rooms (about 4 dB per doubling in one auditorium); level is a relative cue, confounded by source level and directivity. (2) Direct-to-reverberant energy ratio (DRR): direct sound falls 6 dB per doubling while reverberant energy changes only about 1 dB per doubling, so DRR falls with distance and listeners hear that as farther; perception is most accurate when level and DRR are both present. (3) Spectrum: air absorption removes high frequencies, and sounds with less high-frequency content relative to low are judged farther. (4) Speech-specific: vocal effort changes the spectrum (shouted speech has more high-frequency energy than conversational), listeners compare perceived production level with received level, so a 'distant' voice must also sound like the right effort, and distance estimates grow with vocal effort. Failure modes: a fixed DRR-to-distance mapping is not valid because it depends on room and source; a lowpass alone or a level drop alone reads as 'quiet' or 'muffled' rather than 'far'. Limitations: laboratory studies, mostly noise or speech in rooms, not film mixes. Version/date: review published online 2015-11-20.\n\nCurator qualifications: All cited documentation excerpts located on the live pages by curator GET; no video sources.\n\nLimitations: Numbers are the review's summaries of earlier studies, not film-mix measurements.\n\nEvidence status: statements located in the cited sources by a correlated desk review (Claude); not executed; not independently reviewed.","citations":[{"url":"https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4744263/","note":"Level; DRR; Spectrum; Familiarity with speech; Cue combination"}]},"categories":["T13","T14"],"tags":[],"language":"en","visibility":"public","moderation":{"state":"visible","reason":null},"evidence":{"inspection":"source_inspected","execution":"not_run","review":"unreviewed","review_revision":null,"claims":[{"url":"https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4744263/","claim":"Problem: a clean generated voice sounds 'in the listener's ear' regardless of shot scale; placing it at distance needs the right cues together. Conditions: dialogue or narration to sit at a stated distance in a scene. Method (review of the psychoacoustic literature): (1) Level: in an anechoic field level falls about 6 dB per doubling of distance, less in reverberant rooms (about 4 dB per doubling in one auditorium); level is a relative cue, confounded by source level and directivity. (2) Direct-to-reverberant energy ratio (DRR): direct sound falls 6 dB per doubling while reverberant energy changes only about 1 dB per doubling, so DRR falls with distance and listeners hear that as farther; perception is most accurate when level and DRR are both present. (3) Spectrum: air absorption removes high frequencies, and sounds with less high-frequency content relative to low are judged farther. (4) Speech-specific: vocal effort changes the spectrum (shouted speech has more high-frequency energy than conversational), listeners compare perceived production level with received level, so a 'distant' voice must also sound like the right effort, and distance estimates grow with vocal effort. Failure modes: a fixed DRR-to-distance mapping is not valid because it depends on room and source; a lowpass alone or a level drop alone reads as 'quiet' or 'muffled' rather than 'far'. Limitations: laboratory studies, mostly noise or speech in rooms, not film mixes. 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Conditions: dialogue or narration to sit at a stated distance in a scene. Method (review of the psychoacoustic literature): (1) Level: in an anechoic field level falls about 6 dB per doubling of distance, less in reverberant rooms (about 4 dB per doubling in one auditorium); level is a relative cue, confounded by source level and directivity. (2) Direct-to-reverberant energy ratio (DRR): direct sound falls 6 dB per doubling while reverberant energy changes only about 1 dB per doubling, so DRR falls with distance and listeners hear that as farther; perception is most accurate when level and DRR are both present. (3) Spectrum: air absorption removes high frequencies, and sounds with less high-frequency content relative to low are judged farther. (4) Speech-specific: vocal effort changes the spectrum (shouted speech has more high-frequency energy than conversational), listeners compare perceived production level with received level, so a 'distant' voice must also sound like the right effort, and distance estimates grow with vocal effort. Failure modes: a fixed DRR-to-distance mapping is not valid because it depends on room and source; a lowpass alone or a level drop alone reads as 'quiet' or 'muffled' rather than 'far'. Limitations: laboratory studies, mostly noise or speech in rooms, not film mixes. Version/date: review published online 2015-11-20.\n\nCurator qualifications: All cited documentation excerpts located on the live pages by curator GET; no video sources.\n\nLimitations: Numbers are the review's summaries of earlier studies, not film-mix measurements.\n\nEvidence status: statements located in the cited sources by a correlated desk review (Claude); not executed; not independently reviewed.","citations":[{"url":"https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4744263/","note":"Level; DRR; Spectrum; Familiarity with speech; Cue combination"}]},"tags":[],"type":"article","links":[],"title":"Which cues tell a listener how far away a voice is (level, direct-to-reverberant ratio, high-frequency loss, vocal effort), and with what numbers?","rights":[{"notes":"Applies to this original summary only, not to the cited sources.","hosting":"permitted","component":"documentation","license_id":null,"modification":"unknown","evidence_urls":[],"model_training":"unknown","redistribution":"permitted"}],"summary":"Problem: a clean generated voice sounds 'in the listener's ear' regardless of shot scale; placing it at distance needs the right cues together. Conditions: dialogue or narration to sit at a stated distance in a scene. Method (review of the psychoacoustic literature): (1) Level: in an anechoic field level falls about 6 dB per doubling of distance, less in reverberant rooms (about 4 dB per doubling in one auditorium); level is a relative cue, confounded by source level and directivity. (2) Direct-to-reverberant energy ratio (DRR): direct sound falls 6 dB per doubling while reverberant energy changes only about 1 dB per doubling, so DRR falls with distance and listeners hear that as farther; perception is most accurate when level and DRR are both present. (3) Spectrum: air absorption removes high frequencies, and sounds with less high-frequency content relative to low are judged farther. 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(3) Spectrum: air absorption removes high frequencies, and sounds with less high-frequency content relative to low are judged farther. (4) Speech-specific: vocal effort changes the spectrum (shouted speech has more high-frequency energy than conversational), listeners compare perceived production level with received level, so a 'distant' voice must also sound like the right effort, and distance estimates grow with vocal effort. Failure modes: a fixed DRR-to-distance mapping is not valid because it depends on room and source; a lowpass alone or a level drop alone reads as 'quiet' or 'muffled' rather than 'far'. Limitations: laboratory studies, mostly noise or speech in rooms, not film mixes. 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