Abstract:

Sound on the desk top has some similarities and some differences from reproduction over other standardized sound systems such as those employed in the production of film and television programs. This work examines areas where the application of known acoustic and psychoacoustic principles may be used to produce a system that scales the experience of large-scale sound systems optimally to the desk-top environment. Among the methods employed are multichannel reproduction, direct-field dominant reproduction over a wide frequency range, optimal equalization for the conditions encountered by such systems, and wide frequency and dynamic ranges, among others to be discussed. Research topics underway include methods for head tracking and optimal control over the sound field for one listener, with the eventual goal of eliminating surround loudspeakers and replacing them with virtual loudspeakers. The current finding is that contemporary systems are excessively sweet-spot dependent and change the timbre too much to be acceptable professionally in this application, so the direction of research is to reduce these limitations to make a practical system with just three loudspeakers (left, right, and subwoofer).