A multi-channel hear-through filter design approach and its applications

Abstract

Sound characteristics change when propagating through materials and structures, such as vehicle cabins or space partitions. These structures usually block the sound propagation path and cause significant distortion to the sound heard by the other side of the structures while, in many applications, clear speech communication is needed. Especially during the Pandemic of Covid-19, it has become common to have space partitions at face-to-face service locations, for example, places providing food or banking services, for the prevention of virus spread. However, the degraded conversation sound quality caused by these partitions can negatively affects the service quality. A multi-channel active hear-through system is developed in the current work to provide a solution to provide more realistic sound environments for conversation through partitions which can preserve both the spectrum and the spatial distribution of the original sound field. This would also be useful for the improvement of augmented reality experiences and sound transmission quality in divided spaces. Compared with a direct inverse filter design, the coupling effect across channels and the superposition effect of original and reproduced sound are considered in the proposed method.