Acoustic cues for 3-D shape information

Abstract

Three-dimensional resonators, such as cavities or rooms, affect the perceived timbral character of any sound source there enclosed. It is well understood how the resonator size, or the material of the enclosure, are conveyed to the listener by means of specific features of acoustic signals. On the other hand, the perception of the shape of a resonator is a much subtler issue that we investigate in this paper, taking the sphere and the cube as reference cases. The perceptual study is motivated by the availability of a compact resonator model whose parameters can be tuned to represent different shapes.