Improving Subjective Listening Test Methodology: Investigating Crossmodal Effects of Ambient Lighting and Listener Expertise

In subjective listening tests for evaluating perceptual sound quality, numerous factors can significantly affect outcomes. In addition to well-established variables, recent studies have begun to explore the crossmodal effects of lighting-induced bias. Most current standards for subjective sound quality assessment lack explicit specifications regarding lighting conditions and still rely primarily on video evaluation protocols. This highlights a need to investigate the selection of ambient lighting conditions more thoroughly in listening tests. Furthermore, visual stimuli may modulate loudness perception and auditory thresholds—with these effects appearing to be frequency-dependent. Listener expertise, particularly in detecting linear distortions, emerges as a critical variable that should be rigorously controlled for in the ambient lighting design. In this study, participants with varying levels of experience comparatively evaluated multiple loudspeakers under different ambient lighting conditions, both before and after undergoing the listening training focused on the identification of linear distortions. Comparative analyses of pre-training and post-training results—including overall preference rating, data dispersion, intertrial consistency, and multiple comparison results—are presented. The findings provide evidence-based recommendations regarding appropriate ambient lighting in sound quality evaluations. A comprehensive understanding of lighting-induced bias and listener expertise contributes to the development of more reliable and standardized listening test methodologies.