Contribution
Stochastic Inference of Directional Decay Times in a Reverberation Room
* Presenting author
Abstract:
In rooms with non-uniform distribution of absorption, the sound field is generally subject to multi-exponential energy decay. This is especially prominent if absorption is concentrated on a single surface, such as during the measurement of Sabine's absorption coefficient in reverberation rooms. Accordingly, the sound field is subject to directionally dependent damping.In this work, an experimental inference method to identify the directional damping distributions from microphone array measurements is presented. The method is based on a stochastic directional energy decay model. The model hinges on the assumption that the decay process is sufficiently described by a small number of damping constants, assumed to be representative of groups of modes with shared damping properties. A Bayesian variational inference approach is used to jointly infer the model parameters - namely the damping constants and the directional energy distributions of each group of modes - from experimental data.