A Spatialization Server for a Speaker Array as an Integrated Part of a Virtual Environment

Kimitaka Ishikawa, Minefumi Hirose and Jens Herder
The University of Aizu, Japan

Master course student Kimitaka Ishikawa presented a paper ``A Spatialization Server for a Speaker Array as an Integrated Part of a Virtual Environment'' (coauthored by Minefumi Hirose, who got his bachelor degree this year, and Jens Herder), at the IEEE Yuforic Germany '98 conference which was held simultaneously with Virtual Environment '98 in Stuttgart, Germany. The research was done within the Spatial Media Group formed by Michael Cohen, Jens Herder, and William L. Martens.

Pioneer Sound Field Control System in the Multimedia Center

Test virtual environment with visualization of the audible ranges of sound sources

Spatial sound plays an important role in virtual reality environments, allows orientation in space, gives a feeling of space, focuses users attention on events in a scene, and substitutes missing feedback cues. The University of Aizu Multimedia Center has a multichannel loudspeaker array system, (Figure 1) called PSFC (Pioneer Sound Field Control). The Sound Spatialization Framework, developed at the University of Aizu, supports various sound spatialization backends. The PSFC system is one of the backends. The designed sound spatialization server supports the PSFC system, allowing easy integration into virtual environments and extends the PSFC system by modeling distance cues. The integration of this prototype into different applications via the Sound Spatialization Framework reveals the advantages and problems of spatial sound for virtual reality environments.

Kimitaka Ishikawa won the first prize at the IEEE Yuforic Demo Contest for demonstrating how a second virtual environment can be used for designing and debugging a soundscape for that virtual environment (Figure 2), (an essential part of the development of a virtual environment is sound spatialization and design). Tools included a visualizer for sound objects and a soundscape deformer in the form of a 3D widget controlling the spatial mapping of sound objects from application coordinate system to soundscape coordinates.

For further information:

Kimitaka Ishikawa, Minefumi Hirose, and Jens Herder. ``A Spatialization Server for a Speaker Array as an Integrated Part of a Virtual Environment.'' In IEEE Yuforic Germany '98, Stuttgart, Germany, June 1998.

Sound Spatialization Framework http://www-ci.u-aizu.ac.jp/SF/

Katsumi Amano, Fumio Matsushita, Hirofumi Yanagawa, Michael Cohen, Jens Herder, William Martens, Yoshiharu Koba, and Mikio Tohyama. ``A Virtual Reality Sound System Using Room-Related Transfer Functions Delivered Through a Multispeaker Array: the PSFC at the University of Aizu Multimedia Center''. TVRSJ: Trans. of the Virtual Reality Society of Japan, 3(1), March 1998. ISSN 1342-4386.