We present a follow-up study on the perceptual evaluation of the binaural rendering quality of signals from several types of baffled microphone arrays. The tested conditions comprise spherical and equatorial microphone arrays, with spherical and non-spherical baffles, employing non-parametric (signal-independent) rendering and magnitude equalization in the spherical harmonic domain. Following the multi-stimulus category rating paradigm, the arrays are presented in comparison to each other and multiple anchor conditions while omitting an explicit reference stimulus. Our results confirm previous findings that, without an explicit reference, subjects rate the quality of stimuli with large variances, as demonstrated for various repeated low/high-accuracy hidden anchor conditions. The average listener ranked the quality of equatorial arrays above spherical, followed by non-spherical microphone arrays, at the same spherical harmonics order. We discuss statistical trends for individual rendering configurations but find no overall effects in the comparison across different source signals, source incidence directions, or room environments.
