Singer and Audience Evaluations of a Networked Immersive Audio Concert

At the 2023 AES International Conference on Spatial and Immersive Audio, a networked immersive audio concert was performed. A vocal octet connected over the Internet between York and Huddersfield and provided a performance that was auralized in the acoustics of BBC Maida Vale Studio 2. A live audience in Huddersfield experienced the concert with local singers on stage, remote singers auralized alongside, and virtual acoustics rendered on a multichannel array. Another audience in York listened to the concert on headphones. An evaluation of the networked concert experience of the performers and audience is presented in this paper. Results demonstrate that a generally high-quality experience was delivered. Audience response to immersive audio rating items demonstrates a variance in experience. Several aspects of the evaluation context are identified as relevant to this rating variance and discussed as open challenges for audio engineers.