Improving the Perceived Sound Field Continuity Using Convolution of Impulse Sequences for Virtual Acoustics

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The listener's perception of sound field continuity is fundamental to the goal of achieving a high-quality immersive experience in virtual acoustic reality. Any discontinuity in the sound field is likely to become noticeable and may cause the listener's attention to shift away from the experience associated with the awareness of the virtual world. A mismatch of the aural perception with other modalities will cause a further decrease in the immersive potential for every participant. In the recent discovery grant period the research team developed a sophisticated search engine for the Library of Virtual Acoustics (LVA) to manage data that include over 10,000 multichannel room-impulse-responses (RIRs) measured in 216 acoustic spaces. Rendering spaces using the acoustic data contained in the LVA creates for the listener an impression of being immersed in a simulated room that coexists within the actual acoustics of the physical space. The ability to "borrow" high-quality acoustics from carefully measured architectural spaces opens unprecedented perspectives for the use of acoustic virtual reality in the communication of music and speech, but still comes with considerable technological requirements and challenges. In the natural reverberant field of an enclosed space, a listener's immersive acoustic impression is due to a large number of reflections arriving from all possible directions: multiple secondary sources together approximating an infinite radiator. In a virtual environment, the challenge is to achieve the perception of a continuously expanding seamless sound field, when it is generated by a limited number of discrete loudspeakers. Our goal is to make the loudspeakers as undetectable to the listeners as possible, and to imitate a very large number of virtual sources with a relatively small number of loudspeaker channels. The goal of this research program is to create transparent, natural sounding acoustic virtual reality using signal processing and electroacoustics. Virtual acoustics widens the functionality of an architectural space as new system responses may alter the existing acoustic conditions at the push of a button. With this research we aim to maximize the illusion of naturalness in rendered sound fields, preventing users from detecting the presence of enhancing loudspeakers. It is the next critical step in perfecting the aural quality of virtual reality. Immersive design of virtual acoustics will be employed in autonomous vehicles, deep space travel, music performance, homes, recording studios, and medical facilities, to enhance quality of wellbeing.