Localization in Wave Field Synthesis and higher order Ambisonics at different positions within the listening area

H Wierstorf, A Raake, S Spors, "Localization in Wave Field Synthesis and higher order Ambisonics at different positions within the listening area," in Fortschritte der Akustik - DAGA 2013, p. 2376-2379 (2013). [ paper ] [ presentation ]

Bibtex

@inproceedings{Wierstorf2013b,
    title     = {Localization in Wave Field Synthesis and higher order
                 Ambisonics at different positions within the listening area},
    author    = {Wierstorf, Hagen and Raake, Alexander and Spors, Sascha},
    booktitle = {Fortschritte der Akustik - DAGA 2013},
    publisher = {DEGA e.V.},
    address   = {Merano, Italy},
    month     = {March},
    pages     = {2376--2379},
    year      = {2013}
}

Abstract

Sound field synthesis techniques like Wave Field Synthesis and Higher Order Ambisonics have the advantage of providing correct localization within an extended area in comparison to the sweet-spot phenomenon in stereophony. In practice the localization could be disturbed by errors in the synthesized sound field due to the obliged usage of a non-continuous loudspeaker array. This study investigates for different types of virtual sources (point sources, plane waves, focused sources) the influence of the applied loudspeaker spacing on the localization. Therefore subjects were placed at many different positions within the listening area for Wave Field Synthesis and Higher Order Ambisonics. The investigation of different positions and loudspeaker arrays was achieved by applying dynamic binaural synthesis to simulate the corresponding ear signals for the different conditions. The participants listened to the conditions via headphones and indicated the perceived direction by pointing with a head mounted laser pointer towards this direction.