Spatial room impulse response measurement and post-processing for virtual reproduction of a stereo sound system

Abstract

Spatial room impulse responses (SRIRs) characterize the spatial, temporal, and spectral properties of the sound field received at a particular location in a room for a given source-receiver configuration. SRIRs can be captured using spherical microphone arrays and are useful both for evaluating the acoustic performance of a space and in applications where it is desired to auralize the sound field being characterized with varying signals being played from the source. In this work, SRIRs were measured in a living room (mid-frequency RT approximately 0.4 s) using an mh acoustics Eigenmike em32 as the receiver and both a studio monitor loudspeaker and a subwoofer as the sources. Studio monitor placements replicated a left-right-center stereo monitoring configuration, with the subwoofer on the floor below the center loudspeaker, while attempting to avoid source and receiver placement on estimated modal planes in the room. Details of the post-processing used to finalize the SRIRs for use as a virtual stereo sound system will be presented, including cross-over filtering, tuning, and correction of the overall frequency response to a curve that is favorable for in-room loudspeaker listening. Measurement system details, SRIR data visualizations, and RT estimates will also be discussed.