Sound field reproduction using multilayer equivalent source method

Abstract

Sound field reproduction aims to create or reproduce a desired sound environment, where both the audio content and the spatial property of the sound field are preserved. For a practical reproduction system which is usually placed in a real 'listening room', acoustic transfer function measurement of the loudspeaker array is a time consuming work. The equivalent source method is an option to interpolate loudspeaker array acoustic transfer functions over the target region in reverberant sound field and has been implemented in the preceding researches. However, the selection of the optimized distances of the equivalent sources remains a challenging problem, especially considering the complex acoustic environment in reverberant room. In this work, we apply a multilayer equivalent source method. A simulation is conducted in virtual listening rooms with different reverberation conditions to investigate the reproduction performance of the proposed method. The comparison with the conventional single layer equivalent source method is provided.