An approach to immersive audio rendering with wave field synthesis for 3D multimedia content

This paper proposes an immersive audio rendering scheme for networked 3D multimedia systems. The spatial audio rendering method based on wave field synthesis is particularly useful for applications where multiple listeners experience a true spatial soundscape while being free to move without losing spatial sound properties. The proposed approach can be considered as a general solution to the static listening restriction imposed by conventional methods, which rely on an accurate sound reproduction within a sweet spot only. The paper reports on the results of numerical analysis and experimental validation using various sound sources. It is demonstrated and confirmed that while covering the majority of the listening area, the developed approach can create a variety of virtual audio objects at target positions with very high accuracy. Subjective evaluation results show that an accurate spatial impression can be achieved with multiple simultaneous audible depth cues improving localization accuracy over single object rendering.