Reproduction and analysis of near and far stereophonic sound fields with compact uniform linear arrays

Abstract

Stereo speakers are commonly used for multi-modal listening. This includes both near field, on-axis or sweet-spot listening; as well as far field, off-axis or room-fill listening modes. Meanwhile, compact uniform linear arrays (cULA) are increasingly available as an alternative to conventional stereo systems. However, acoustic properties of cULA limit their ability to reproduce accurate sound fields for both modes simultaneously. This paper proposes several modifications to wave field synthesis that serve together as a simple and robust method for multi-modal stereo reproduction with cULA. Near field performance is analyzed by comparing estimates of stereophonic localization for both the proposed system and conventional stereo. Far field performance is analyzed by comparing magnitude responses across both systems' sound fields. Finally, connections between array configuration parameters and stereophonic reproduction artifacts are highlighted.