Physical Properties of Sound Field Based Estimation of Phantom Source in 3D

Abstract

3D spatial sound effects can be achieved by amplitude panning with several loudspeakers, which can produce the auditory event of phantom source at arbitrary location with loudspeakers at arbitrary locations in 3D space. The estimation of the phantom source is to estimate the signal and location of a sound source which produce the same perception of auditory event with that of phantom source by loudspeakers. Several methods have been proposed to estimate the phantom sources, but these methods couldn’t ensure the conservation of sound energy at listening point in sound field, which including kinetic energy (particle velocity) and potential energy (sound pressure), so estimated errors were caused. A new method to estimate phantom source signal and the position is proposed, which is based on the physical properties (particle velocity, sound pressure) of the listening point in the sound field by loudspeakers. Moreover, the proposed method could be also appropriate for arbitrary asymmetric arranged loudspeakers. Experimental results showed that compared with current methods, estimated distortions of the location of phantom source and the superposed signal by loudspeakers with proposed method have been reduced obviously.