Article
The Spatial Decomposition Method meets Wave Field Synthesis: A feasibility study (en)
* Presenting author
Abstract:
In the recent years, several methods for the auralization of measured room impulse responses (RIR) captured with compact microphone arrays have been proposed, such as the Spatial Decomposition Method (SDM). However, in practice these methods are generally paired with reproduction methods suitable for single listeners e.g. binaural or loudspeaker setups presenting sweet spots of reduced area. Wave Field Synthesis (WFS) is a reproduction alternative that presents interesting possibilities, offering large listening areas with perceptually acceptable spatial quality and the possibility of rendering focused sources within the listening area. The rendering of WFS scenes requires a sound field representation in which acoustic events are described as either point sources or plane waves. In this work we present a feasibility study with both simulations and measurements of performance halls in which SDM measurements have been conducted. We present alternatives for the parameterization of the SDM analyzed RIRs, evaluate the spatial fidelity of the rendered responses, and discuss the challenges and alternatives to overcome the inherent limitations of a 2D reproduction setup. This kind of pipeline can find applications in the study of music performance, where multiple in-situ musicians could perform simultaneously in an acoustic space shared with other synthetically rendered musicians.