Object based approach for electronic variable acoustics systems

Abstract

Demand for spatially accurate high-quality sound reproduction in the audio entertainment industry is now at an entirely new level. In today’s world of immersive entertainment, sound reproduction is about more than just decibels—via the accurate localization of sound sources, performances can be immeasurably enhanced in classical concerts, operas, theatres, and every field of live entertainment. The days of two-dimensional PAs are over—a new era has arrived with 3D spatial sound and enhanced room acoustics. This paper describes a fully object-based approach to immersive sound reproduction, combining 3D positioning of audio sources and acoustic enhancement on the same unit by processing room reflections as audio objects. The algorithms combine the flexibility of traditional in-line digital reverberation devices with the quality and natural impression of a regenerative reverberation. The result of this process is a subset of discrete, early and late reverberant reflections which are convolved with the direct sound to serve as input objects for further processing. This unique object based system approach offers many advantages with respect to the traditional channel based approach. The technological principles of this approach, along with the results of successful applications throughout Europe, will be shown.