Assessment of the Perception of Synthesized Sound Fields with a Binaural Model

H Wierstorf, A Raake, S Spors, "Assessment of the Perception of Synthesized Sound Fields with a Binaural Model," in FORUM ACUSTICUM, p. 2027-2132 (2011). [ paper ] [ presentation ]

Bibtex

@inproceedings{Wierstorf2011c,
    title     = {Assessment of the Perception of Synthesized Sound Fields with
                 a Binaural Model},
    author    = {Wierstorf, Hagen and Raake, Alexander and Spors, Sascha},
    address   = {Aalborg, Denmark},
    booktitle = {Forum Acusticum},
    pages     = {2027--2132},
    month     = {June},
    year      = {2011}
}

Abstract

Wave Field Synthesis (WFS) is a technique to synthesize a desired sound field in an extended area surrounded by a secondary source distribution. In practice these secondary sources are realized with loudspeakers and therefore a spatial sampling of the secondary sources occurs. The sampling will lead to aliasing artifacts in the sound field depending on the distance between the loudspeakers. In the time domain these artifacts will occur as echoes. If a linear loudspeaker array is used its finite length will further introduce artifacts in the sound field. In this case the truncated array acts as a slit for the desired sound field and diffraction takes place, which leads to additional waves occurring from the edges of the loudspeaker array. The perception of these deviations from the desired sound field depends on the strength of the deviation and on the type of the desired sound field, e.g. if we have plane waves or a focused source located within the listener area. A test was conducted to rate the different perceptional dimensions of the artifacts. A binaural model after Lindemann (1986a) was used to predict the perception and to get insight into the mechanisms that may play a role in the perception of artifacts of synthesized sound fields.