Enzo De Sena

This paper presents a method for sound field interpolation/extrapolation from a spatially sparse set of binaural room impulse responses (BRIRs). The method focuses on the direct component and early reflections, and is framed as an inverse problem seeking the weight signals of an acoustic model based on the time-domain equivalent source (TES). Once the weight signals are estimated, the (continuous) sound field can be reconstructed and BRIRs can be synthesised at any position and orientation in a source-free volume bounded by the TESs. The L1-norm, sum of L2-norm, and Tikhonov regularisation functions were tested, with L1-norm (imposing spatio-temporal sparsity) performing the best. Simulations exhibit lower normalised mean squared error (NMSE) compared to a nearest-neighbour approach, which uses the spatially closest BRIR measurement for rendering. Results show good temporal alignment of direct sound and reflections, even when a non-individualised head-related impulse response (HRIR) was used for system inversion and BRIR synthesis. The performance is also assessed using an objective measure of perceived coloration called the predicted binaural coloration (PBC) model, which reveals a good perceptual match between interpolated/extrapolated and true BRIRs.

When a sound source is occluded, diffraction replaces direct sound as the first wavefront arrival and can influence important aspects of perception such as localisation. Few experiments have investigated how diffraction modelling influences the perceived plausibility of an acoustic simulation. In this paper, an experiment was run to investigate the plausibility of an acoustic simulation with and without diffraction in an L-shaped room in VR. The rendering was carried out using a real-time 6DOF geometrical acoustics and feedback-delay-network hybrid model, and diffraction was modelled using the physically accurate Biot-Tolstoy-Medwin model. The results show that diffraction increases the perceived plausibility of the acoustic simulation. In addition, the study compared diffraction of the direct sound alone and diffraction of both direct and reflected sound. A significant increase in plausibility was found by the addition of diffracted reflection paths, but only in the so-called shadow zone.