CAREER: Integrating Time-Variant Source Directivity into Architectural Acoustic Auralizations

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This project will escalate and integrate architectural acoustics research and education in the United States. The research focus is on fundamental advances in understanding and modeling of auralization, or the process in which the listening experience in a space is audibly simulated from a physical or computational model. The computational procedure is already being used in the prediction and design of the acoustics in built spaces, but its accuracy and realism are limited by geometrical considerations, knowledge of material properties, and the use of time-invariant sound source directivity. This project plans to implement changing source directivity in real time to improve the accuracy of auralizations. Psychoacoustic subjective tests will also be run, so that perceptual differences may be quantified between (a) traditional auralizations using omnidirectional time-invariant sources, (b) auralizations with time-variant source directivity, and (c) measured results from actual sources in real spaces. With improvements, auralization will advance the study of acoustics in the built environment and potentially impact many other fields. Realistic sound fields can be recreated and tested on humans in controlled laboratory environments for psychoacoustic studies; auralized sound fields may be used to train people who are vision-impaired; and assessments may be made of noise quality in work environments and how that impacts productivity. The United States currently lacks a technical center for architectural acoustics research and education, as is found overseas. The PI plans to promote such a hub within the University of Nebraska - Lincoln Architectural Engineering program. The significance and excitement about building acoustics will be conveyed by making the auralization research accessible to all levels: in required undergraduate and graduate acoustics classes; in opportunities for undergraduates to complete segments of the research, mentored by graduate students; and through outreach to local high schools so younger students may participate as test subjects or aid with measurements of real spaces, such as their own classrooms.