Abstract
Introduction: Surrounding spherical loudspeaker arrays facilitate the application of various spatial audio reproduction methods and can be used for a broad range of acoustic measurements and perceptual evaluations. Methods: Installed in an anechoic chamber, the design and implementation of such an array of 68 coaxial loudspeakers, sampling a spherical cap with a radius of 1.35 m on an equal-area grid, is presented. A network-based audio backbone enables low-latency signal transmission with low-noise amplifiers providing a high signal-to-noise ratio. To address batch-to-batch variations, the loudspeaker transfer functions were equalised by individually designed 512-taps finite impulse response filters. Time delays and corresponding level adjustments further helped to minimise radial mounting imperfections. Results: The equalised loudspeaker transfer functions measured under ideal conditions and when mounted, their directivity patterns, and in-situ background noise levels satisfy key criteria towards applicability. Advantages and shortcomings of the selected decoders for panning-based techniques, as well as the influence of loudspeaker positioning errors, are analysed in terms of simulated performance metrics. An evaluation of the achievable channel separation allows deriving recommendations of feasible subset layouts for loudspeaker-based binaural reproduction. Conclusion: The combination of electroacoustic properties, simulated sound field synthesis performance and measured channel separation classifies the system as suitable for its target applications.
Highlights
Research on loudspeaker-based spatial audio reproduction methods requires carefully designed surrounding spherical loudspeaker arrays to enable practicality of spatialisation methods, aiming at plausible or even authentic perception of simulated virtual acoustic environments (VAEs) [1,2,3]
Introduction: Surrounding spherical loudspeaker arrays facilitate the application of various spatial audio reproduction methods and can be used for a broad range of acoustic measurements and perceptual evaluations
We present the design of a surrounding spherical cap loudspeaker array, including a description of the reproduction environment, the array mounting construction, the electroacoustic features of the loudspeakers with custom-made cabinets and the signal network implementation
Summary
Research on loudspeaker-based spatial audio reproduction methods requires carefully designed surrounding spherical loudspeaker arrays to enable practicality of spatialisation methods, aiming at plausible or even authentic perception of simulated virtual acoustic environments (VAEs) [1,2,3]. All power amplifiers were switched on to investigate the combined noise contribution of the power amplifiers and the loudspeakers during standby operation. Both measurements were performed for a duration of 60 s. The results of the performance metrics using panningbased spatial audio reproduction methods are shown in Figure 11 for VBAP, MDAP and the selected HOA decoder strategies (N = 7), which were calculated based on the ideal and actual loudspeaker layouts. The same tendency can be observed in r^E, not as pronounced for the variance
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