Sound field recording using distributed spherical microphone arrays based on a virtual spherical model

Abstract

Binaural synthesis helps provide rich spatial information to users. Spherical microphone arrays and head-related transfer functions significantly aid in realizing the aforementioned approach. In a typical case, a spherical microphone array is set at the recording point, and listeners experience the sound binaurally as if they are at the recording point. However, in real situations, setting a microphone array at the recording point is not always feasible. In this study, we investigate binaural synthesis using an Auditory Display based on VIrtual SpherE (ADVISE) model with distributed spherical microphone arrays. In the proposed ADVISE-based method, the virtual sphere is set around the target point, and the sound pressure on the boundary of the virtual sphere is calculated based on recorded signals using spherical microphone arrays. The simulation results indicate that the proposed method can robustly synthesize sound fields even when the target point is far from the spherical microphone arrays.