Real Time Synthesis of Complex Acoustic Environments

Symposium:

• TISEA: Third International Symposium on Electronic Art
• More presentations from TISEA:  

• Machines, Models and Perception

• Real Time Synthesis of Complex Acoustic Environments

• Scott Foster
• Elizabeth Wenzel
• R. Michael Taylor

• This paper describes some recent efforts to “render” the complex acoustic fields experienced by a listener within an environment. It represents an extension of earlier efforts to synthesise externalised, three-dimensional sound cues over headphones using a very high-speed, signal processor, the Convolvotron (Wenzel, et al., 1988). The synthesis technique involves the digital generation of stimuli using Head-Related Transfer Functions (FIRTFs) measured in the ear canals of individual subjects for a large number of equidistant locations in the anechoic chamber (Wightman & Kistler, 1989). The advantage of this technique is that it preserves the complex pattern of interaural differences over the entire spectrum of the stimulus, thus capturing the effects of filtering by the pinnae, head, shoulders and torso.

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• Paper