**5.2 Could binaural technologies that are adapted to specific performance contexts enhance musicians' listening comfort, perception of a realistic auditory scene, and musical expression and creativity?**

Across the seven comparison case studies, performers appreciated the listening comfort in binaural compared to stereo, and they expressed that the binaural rendering was more realistic than the stereo rendering. Nevertheless, in keeping with AMR and AAR definitions from the literature review [24, 26], the meaning of the realism concept varied depending on the augmentation type, from a convincing recreated spatial auditory scene in AMR to an auditory scene close to what performers heard in the real acoustics in AAR. This AAR realism definition was further researched by Soudoplatoff and Pras [7] who asked 15 sound engineers to describe how real they perceived the superposition of the binaural rendering of two soundscapes that were captured in the same room with the same microphone setup. The two soundscapes featured a jazz duo performance that was happening live in real time on the other side of the studio window, and a crowded ambiance that was recorded a few days before to give the illusion of a bar soundscape. Results showed that participants perceived "scene realism and a well-established illusion of being in a crowd." These outcomes call for future research that would assess the relevance of superposing a binauralized pre-recording of the synchronization cues in the venue to the music in performers' monitoring mixes.

For all AAR and AMR case performance studies, findings highlighted that the binaural conditions enabled all participants to be more collectively and cognitively involved in their creative tasks compared with the stereo conditions. This implies that our AAR setups could overcome social interaction challenges when wearing headphones and that an AMR setup could enhance social interaction among participants remotely located. Specifically, we suggest that participants were more *immersed* in performance [50] and that the free improvisers experienced a state of *flow* [63] since they performed longer takes with binaural monitoring. These research outcomes are important from an artistic perspective and should be made broadly available to musicians. Indeed, Menon noted from his studio experience as a rock guitarist that when controlling a personal monitoring mixer consumes more time than desired, musicians would rather cope with whatever they are hearing than to fix these issues. Therefore, we believe that greater learning around the impact of monitoring systems on the musicians' ability to be immersed in performance would motivate them to always ensure an optimized headphone mix.

In keeping with the findings of the BBC study [45], we found that the binaural rendering of the main array worked well to recreate the auditory scene of the film-scoring orchestra. In contrast, the binaural rendering of the same array was problematic in the jazz symphonic ensemble situation that featured complex interactions of room and instrument acoustics. Here we propose three solutions that could have helped reduce the drum leakage and better integrate the electric instruments and the double bass within the auditory scene. First, the percentage of natural reverberation in the mix could be manipulated by changing the balance between the main array and the spot microphones. Second, reverberation could be artificially re-created by using a real-time binaural room simulator with an objectbased mixing device to wet the electric instruments and double bass, and thus enable their acoustic homogeneity with the rest of the auditory scene. Finally, using transparent glass panels could minimize the leakage of the drums while maintaining visual contact and giving all band members the illusion of playing in the same room. Moreover, the jazz symphonic ensemble situation reminded us that flaws in the quality and intercommunication setup of a monitoring system can be detrimental to the performance situation, for instance by increasing performers' stress [1], and/or by disempowering musicians while reinforcing the engineers' sound control [4]. This negative experience demonstrates that technological adaptation to the music performance context requires sound engineers to consider the overall studio context and researchers to ensure the success of the first trial.
