Graduate Students: David Dick, Ph.D. 2017, and Matthew Neal, M.S. 2015
An important component of the spatial impression of a performing arts space is listener envelopment (LEV), the sense of being immersed in or surrounded by the sound field. This project aims at understanding the spatial and temporal factors that contribute to the perception of LEV. Room impulse responses have been measured in several performing arts spaces using a three-way omnidirectional sound source and a 32-element spherical microphone array. The spherical microphone array data have been processed using beamforming techniques to analyze the 3-D sound field spectrally, temporally, and spatially. The spatial room impulse responses have also been processed for playback over a 30-channel loudspeaker array via of 3rd order Ambisonics, which is currently being utilized for subjective listening tests in which participants rate how enveloped they feel by different sound fields. The LEV subjective test results will be correlated with the objective analysis of the sound field in order to develop a new metric to predict the sense of LEV. This methodology is an improvement on previous LEV studies for several reasons: the spherical microphone array allows for a higher resolution spatial analysis than previous techniques, the sound fields used in subjective listening tests are realistic since they come from measured impulse responses, and the sound fields are presented to listeners in 3-D space rather than just the horizontal plane.
Project Publications:
- Dick, D. (2017). “A New Metric to Predict Listener Envelopment Based on Spherical Microphone Array Measurements and Higher Order Ambisonic Reproductions.” Ph.D. Dissertation, The Pennsylvania State University.
- Dick, D.A. and Vigeant, M.C. (2016). “A comparison of measured room acoustics metrics using a spherical microphone array and conventional methods.” Appl. Acoust. 107:34-45
- Dick, D.A. and Vigeant, M.C. (2015). “Investigation of listener envelopment and the late sound field using spherical microphone array impulse response measurements.” Inst. of Acoust. 9th Int. Conf. on Auditorium Acoust. Paris, France, 9 pages
- Neal, M.T. and Vigeant, M.C. (2015). “Subjective study on listener envelopment using hybrid room acoustics simulation and higher order Ambisonic reproduction.” Inst. of Acoust. 9th Int. Conf. on Auditorium Acoust. Paris, France, 8 pages
- Neal, M. (2015). “Investigating the sense of listener envelopment in concert halls using third-order Ambisonic reproduction over a loudspeaker array and a hybrid room acoustics simulation method.” M.S. Thesis, The Pennsylvania State University.
- Neal, M.T. and Vigeant, M.C. (2015). “Connecting the sense of envelopment to specific components of the sound field using perceptually motivated auralizations (A).” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 137:2357
- Dick, D.A. and Vigeant, M.C. (2014). “A comparison of late lateral energy (GLL) and lateral energy fraction (LF) measurements using a spherical microphone array and conventional methods.” [Peer-reviewed] Proc. of European Acoustical Association Joint Symp. on Auralization and Ambisonics, Berlin, Germany, 7 pages