Article
Audio-visual Virtual Environment Design for Product Sound Quality Evaluation (en)
* Presenting author
Abstract:
Audio-visual virtual environments are increasingly becoming prominent for acoustic research. Such environments can either replicate real-world conditions in a more controlled and reproducible manner or offer an extension of binaural listening conditions by including dynamic reproduction, visual elements, and user interactions. They also enable the implementation of tools for gathering additional data on user behaviour. However, the development of such virtual environments usually requires interfaces between multiple software components such as game engines, audio renderers, and acoustics simulators, depending on the requirements of the virtual scenario. This study focuses on the development of virtual replica of a real-world listening experiment concerned with the subjective sound quality evaluation of electric coffee grinders. For this project, the virtual scenario was created using the free and open-source game engine Godot, the Virtual Acoustics (VA) auralization framework and the RAVEN room acoustics simulator. The complete procedure is described and discussed, including the measurements and recordings for the reproduction of the virtual source, the creation of visual replica, the user-interface for the evaluation task, as well as the optimization and consolidation of the employed software tools.