Reverberation Effects on Mental Wellbeing

Abstract

Music usually serves as a regulator for personal emotions and mental wellbeing. However, there exists few current research on how specific aspects of music production would affect perceived wellbeing. Therefore, this study seeks to find out how deep reverberation affects the perceived wellbeing by evaluating immediate affective response. Although earlier works have established the relationship between music and mental wellbeing in certain aspects, few have evaluated the effects of reverberation on affective response alone. To bridge this gap, this study employs an experimental survey design, which involves participants listening to melodically identical music extracts with different levels of reverb, then filling out a survey containing self-assessments of their affect response based on twenty emotion state items of the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) scale. Therefore, this study will attempt to reveal whether variations in the level of reverberation (wet-dry mix) result in differences in affect response, providing future research directions for spatial audio and music psychology.