The Immersive Audio Environment - Implementation, Subjective Test, and Results

Abstract

The effectiveness of virtual environments depends largely on how efficiently they recreate the real world. In the case of auditory virtual environments, the importance of accurate recreation is enhanced since there are no visual cues to assist perception, as in the case of audio-visual virtual environments. In this paper, we present the Immersive Audio Environment (IAE), an easily constructible and portable structure, which is capable of 3-D sound auralization with very high spatial resolution. A novel method for acoustically positioning loudspeakers in space, which is required by the IAE for simulation of sound sources, is presented in this paper. We also present a method to calibrate loudspeakers in an audio system in the case when the loudspeakers are not of the same type. Our contribution is the creation of a system that uses existing and modifications of existing techniques; Vector Based Amplitude Panning (VBAP), in order to recreate an audio battle environment. The IAE recreates the audio effects of battle scenes and can be used as a virtual battle environment for training soldiers. The results of subjective tests show a very low error standard deviation for azimuth and elevation angles and a high correlation between user responses and true angles.