Toward sound-based synthesis: the far-field case

We consider the problem of synthesizing the sound at any desired position and time from the recording of a set of microphones. Similar to the image-based rendering approach for vision, we propose a sound-based synthesis approach for sound. In this approach, audio signals at new positions are interpolated directly from the recorded signals of nearby microphones. The key underlying problems for sound-based synthesis are sampling and reconstruction of the sound field. We provide a spectral analysis of the sound field under the far-field assumption. Based on this analysis, we derive the minimum sampling and optimal reconstruction for several common settings.