Contribution
Investigating the Plausibility of Real Sound Sources Captured with Spherical Microphone Arrays
* Presenting author
Abstract:
Over the past years, Augmented Reality (AR) applications have gained increasing interest. A key aspect of audio for AR is the plausible rendering of real sound sources. However, research is currently mainly limited to the plausible auralization of loudspeakers. This study investigates the perceptual plausibility of virtual representations of real sound sources within real-world environments. In a listening experiment, typical office sounds like printers or keyboards were recorded with a spherical microphone array (Eigenmike EM64) in a reverberant environment and binaurally presented to the listeners. The evaluation followed the plausibility test paradigm, in which subjects were asked to determine whether a signal was real or virtual. Preliminary results suggest that real sound sources recorded with spherical microphone arrays can be plausibly reproduced in headphone-based virtual acoustic environments. Results were further compared to prior research on the plausible auralization of loudspeakers. Further implications of the results are discussed in detail.