Recommended software for simulating moving sound sources?

["Oberfeld-Twistel, Daniel" <oberfeld@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear list,

could anyone here recommend a software for simulating and presenting moving sound sources in virtual acoustics (via headphones)? 

We want to study the use of auditory and visual information in simple traffic-related tasks, like street crossing (pedestrian stands at a crosswalk, car approaches from the left, pedestrian decides if he or she can safely cross the street before the car will arrive at the crosswalk).

What should the software be capable to do?

1) Physically accurate simulation of between 1 and 4 moving sound sources. It will be necessary to simulate different trajectories, different constant velocities, or decelerating or accelerating sound sources. In addition, it should of course be possible to specify the position of the virtual listener within the simulated acoustic scene. We would strongly prefer a "high level" approach where we can tell the software, e.g., that the sound source starts at a given point in space and then moves to another defined point in space at constant speed and within in a specified time interval, rather than having to solve wave equations ourselves...
2) We want to present the stimuli via headphones. Being able to use individualized HRTFs is not a critical issue.
3) We will simulate typical traffic situations in a relatively large open space, so only a reflecting ground surface will be present, and we need to model these reflections. However, if the software is capable of simulating other reflecting surfaces (e.g., walls of nearby buildings), this would of course be no disadvantage.
4) In the simplest case, we will simulate a point source emitting for example a broadband spectrum (engine noise). The capability to simulate sound sources with different directional properties would be a plus, but is not critical.
5) At least in the first phase of our project, we do not intend to use head- or motion tracking, so dynamic updating of the acoustic scene is not required. However, it would be advantageous to have a software with this capability for future studies.
6) The software should be capable to simulate self-motion of the listener on a pre-defined trajectory (again, no dynamic/interactive mode required).
7) It would be ok to generate the sound files offline, at least in the first phase where the simulations are non-interactive.

Apart from these "acoustic requirements", because we want to study conditions with both auditory and visual information, the issue of audio-visual synchronization is critical. I would be grateful to receive some recommendations concerning this issue, too!

This is non-commercial university research, and an approximate information about the price tag would be great...

Looking forward to any suggestions or ideas you might have!

Best

Daniel


PD Dr. Daniel Oberfeld-Twistel
Johannes Gutenberg - Universitaet Mainz
Department of Psychology
Experimental Psychology
Wallstrasse 3
55122 Mainz
Germany

Phone ++49 (0) 6131 39 39274 
Fax   ++49 (0) 6131 39 39268
http://www.staff.uni-mainz.de/oberfeld/
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