Sweet Area using Ambisonics with simulated Line Arrays
* Presenting author
Abstract:
Previous studies have shown that the sweet area size of Ambisonic reproduction, i.e., the area around the central listening position in which the playback can still be perceived in plausible quality, increases with the Ambisonics order. It can be assumed that an additional limitation is due to the strong dependency of each loudspeaker's level on the listening position when using typical point-source loudspeakers. To investigate the possible application of line arrays with Ambisonics, we present a listening experiment that simulates the effects of line arrays by compensating the position-dependent levels of each point-source loudspeaker for a single listener, using a motion capture system. We implemented three distance-dependent level compensation methods into our loudspeaker system: 0dB (no compensation), +3dB, and +6dB (full compensation of the point source) per doubling of distance. The experiment evaluated the sweet area for localization of a frontal source decoded in 1st, 3rd, and 5th order, as well as for envelopment, using a diffuse feedback delay network decoded in 5th order. For both qualities, the results show that level compensation is capable of enlarging the perceptual sweet area.