Scheduling playback of audio in a virtual acoustic space

An apparatus, comprising:

• an interface system;
• and
• a control system configured for communication with the interface system, the control system being further configured to perform operations of:
• receiving, via the interface system, audio data corresponding to a plurality of instances of speech, the audio data including at least one of:
• (a) speech data from multiple endpoints, recorded separately or (b) speech data from a single endpoint corresponding to multiple conference participants and including spatial information for each of the multiple talkers;
• rendering the speech data for each of the talkers to a separate virtual position in a virtual acoustic space;
• and
• scheduling the instances of speech to be played back such that an amount of playback overlap between at least two of the instances of speech is greater than an amount of original overlap between two corresponding instances of speech, wherein the scheduling is performed, at least in part, according to a set of perceptually-motivated rules.