Development of a Virtual Acoustic Showroom for Simulating Listening Environments and Audio Speakers

Virtual acoustic techniques can be used to create virtual listening environments for multiple purposes. Using multi-speaker reproduction, a physical environment can take on the acoustical appearance of another environment. Implementation of this environment auralization could change the way customers evaluate speakers in a retail store. The objective of this research is to develop a virtual acoustic showroom using a multi- speaker system. The two main components to the virtual acoustic showroom are simulating living environments using the image source method, and simulating speaker responses using inverse filtering. The image source method is used to simulate realistic living environments by filtering the environment impulse response by frequency-dependant absorption coefficients of typical building materials. Psychoacoustic tests show that listeners can match virtual acoustic cues with appropriate virtual visual cues. Inverse filtering is used to "replace" the frequency response function of one speaker with another, allowing a single set of speakers to represent any number of other speakers. Psychoacoustic tests show that listeners could not distinguish the difference between the original speaker and the reference speaker that was mimicking the original. The two components of this system are shown to be accurate both empirically and psychologically.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Mechanical Engineering

Department dc:contributor.department

Mechanical Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2004

Author dc:creator

• Collins, Christopher Michael

Chairs dc:contributor.committeechair

• Johnson, Martin E.
• Carneal, James P.

Committee member dc:contributor.committeemember

• Bowman, Douglas A.

• Virtual Acoustics
• Image Source
• Inverse Filter

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Dc Identifier Other

etd-06032004-123749

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/9965