Singers’ likability of the acoustic environment and adaptation of singing in contemporary churches

Several studies have reported that singers’ performances vary across different acoustic environments due to the perception variations of the space acoustic characteristics. This study investigated these relationships based on the feedback of six professional singers performing in four contemporary churches. The acoustic parameters according to ISO 3382-1 were measured and singing delivery parameters such as the Power Singing Ratio and Cepstral Peak Prominence Smoothed (CPPS) were analyzed. In order to investigate the singers’ likability of the acoustic environment, the study has been structured in two phases: 1) preliminary subjective feedback of the singers has been collected immediately after the four venues performance, showing that they naturally adapted their singing to auditory feedback of each church, and 2) a subjective listening test with amateur singers has been conducted in the Audio Space Lab at the Department of Energy, Politecnico di Torino, Italy. This laboratory, equipped with a 16-loudspeaker spherical array system, enabled real-time auralization based on 3rd order Ambisonic impulse responses recorded in a single position within each church. The amateur singers were asked to evaluate their preferences after performing in each auralized environment, and their responses were compared to those of professional singers who had performed in the four churches.