Spatial aliasing study using a high-resolution radiation measurement of a violin

Abstract

Sound source radiation patterns can be employed in a virtual acoustic system in order to improve the realistic experience of the listener. Many studies were described in the literature, in which spherical microphone arrays and spherical harmonics were used to capture the radiation pattern of musical instruments. In these studies, however, a limited number of microphones is used due to technical reasons that involve a non-repeatable excitation by the human player and the corresponding requirement to capture the radiation in one single excitation. Up to now, the radiation pattern is measured without a reference that describes the degree of spatial aliasing caused by the limited number of microphones. This work presents a high-resolution spatial sampling of the radiation pattern of an electrically excited violin. An analytical measure to the degree of spatial aliasing is represented and calculated for each number of microphones, using the high-resolution measurement as a reference.