Abstract
In our information-overloaded daily lives, unwanted sounds create confusion, disruption and fatigue in what do and experience. Taking control of your own sound environment, you can design what information to hear and how. Providing personalised sound to different people over loudspeakers enables communication, human connection and social activity in a shared space, meanwhile addressing the individuals’ needs. Recent developments in object-based audio, robust sound zoning algorithms, computer vision, device synchronisation and electronic hardware facilitate personal control of immersive and interactive reproduction techniques. Accordingly, the creative sector is moving towards more demand for personalisation and personalisable content.
This tutorial offers participants a novel and timely introduction to the increasingly valuable capability to personalise sound over loudspeakers, alongside resources for the audio signal processing community. Presenting the science behind personalising sound technologies and providing insights for making sound zones in practice, we hope to create better listening experiences. The tutorial attempts a holistic exposition of techniques for producing personal sound over loudspeakers. It incorporates a practical step-by-step guide to digital filter design for real-world multizone sound reproduction and relates various approaches to one another thereby enabling comparison of the listener benefits.