Researchers have demonstrated that ambisonics technology could be used to explore how the human brain processes sounds in a breakthrough for immersive experiences.
Scientists from the Western University in Ontario, Canada tested the limits of ambisonics sound technology through the AudioDome, a loudspeaker array reproducing sound sources at any location when the listener is placed in the middle.
Published in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (JASA) on April 15, findings from the experiment prove the loudspeaker array can reproduce sound at a spatial scale beyond the human limits of perception.
Researcher Nima Zargarnezhad said: “The ambisonics technology promises highly focal sound source reproduction, enormously valuable to researchers wishing to maintain tight experimental control while also studying human auditory spatial perception in the three-dimensional soundscapes our auditory system has evolved to handle.”
Zargarnezhad’s team is interested in performing human experiments using the loudspeaker setup, validating the effectiveness of the AudioDome’s ambisonics technology to simulate real life.
Zargarnezhad continued: “We conclude that the ambisonics algorithm can accurately reproduce the identity and location of many common sounds, including speech, at a spatial resolution at the level of human spatial acuity.
“This is sufficient to ensure the reproduced soundscapes are accurately simulating the real world.”
The AudioDome experiments support research into our increased ability to distinguish between stimuli in different locations, known as spatial acuity, in front of our faces versus around the sides of our heads.
The researchers also found the accuracy and precision of a sound’s simulated location doesn’t depend on how far it is from an actual speaker location.
They observed that the ambisonics algorithm accurately reproduced sound energy up to about 4 kilohertz in frequency, sufficient to reproduce speech although it would sound degraded – as though heard over a telephone.
Image credit: sonible GmbH, Graz, Austria