Thanks DDF. Interesting reference - it brings back memories. Colin Cherry, originator of the Cocktail Party effect, was a critical mentor to me when I was deciding on a PhD thesis topic - which ended up being on sound localization. That was 1960, at Imperial College in London.
The other point worth mentioning is that back in the early 1990s, at the NRC in Ottawa, I constructed a flexible-geometry room complex to examine the effects of the listening room on subjective loudspeaker ratings. The experiments are described in: Olive, S.E., Schuck, P.L., Sally, S.L. and Bonneville, M. (1995). “The Variability of Loudspeaker Sound Quality Among Four Domestic Sized Rooms”, 99thConvention, Audio Eng. Soc., Preprint 4092. and also in Section 7.6.2 in the 3rd edition of my book. There were three very closely ranked and very good speakers in the test - it was not easy. The rooms were very different. Real-time double-blind listening tests were done, as well as time shifted binaural versions of those tests. Binaural results and live results closely agreed. The key finding was that when listeners did the multiple randomized comparisons in the same room, each of the four rooms in turn, the sound quality ratings were very similar. This was also true when the experience was through calibrated insert earphones using binaural recordings. The significant variable was the loudspeaker, and the room was not a significant factor. However, when the binaural recordings were presented in randomized sequence, not permitting the listeners to adapt to the room, the room became the dominant factor and the loudspeaker was not a significant factor. So, it is undoubtedly true that the room modifies the overall sound, but it is also true that with an opportunity to adapt to the room, listeners were able to decide on the relative merits of the loudspeakers in the same way in very different rooms. Clearly we have significant ability to "listen through" rooms.
