Wafe-Field Synthesis: State of the Art and Future Applications

Abstract

Wave-Field Synthesis (WFS) has become one of the most promising spatial sound reproduction systems. The most basic difference of WFS in comparison to other available systems is that the acoustic field is accurately synthesized using loudspeaker arrays in a broad area, suppressing the sweet spot that characterizes conventional surround systems and giving an accurate and deep immersion for all the listeners. In this paper, a review of the main concepts related to WFS, from its fundamentals to the latest applications and developments is presented. The limitations and drawbacks of WFS are listed and succinctly described, giving also the main proposal to overcome these limitations. Among them, a solution to include elevation in WFS is presented and some recent techniques to perform stereo to WFS up-mixing are also commented. Finally, applications of WFS to different engineering areas such as immersive videoconference and auditory display systems are presented.