A comparative study of spherical microphone arrays based on subjective assessment of recordings reproduced over different audio systems

Abstract : This study presents an evaluation of sound recordings acquired with two rigid spherical microphone arrays of the exact same size fitted with different type of capsules. These two sets of capsules were of small and large membrane sizes respectively. Objective evaluation has been previously performed by the authors by analyzing the reconstructed spherical harmonic components. Listening tests are conducted to evaluate the perceived quality of the signals acquired with the two arrays and indicate the possible degradation due to the signal processing techniques used to calculate the spherical harmonic components. The subjective evaluation has indicated a slight but significant preference on the array with the large membrane sensors.