Comparing Three Movement Simulation Algorithms from Discrete Impulse Responses

Mullins SS, Hermes SL. Comparing Three Movement Simulation Algorithms from Discrete Impulse Responses. In: AVARIG 2026: Audio for Virtual and Augmented Reality and Immersive Games. Audio Engineering Society; 2026. Paper 10333. Available from: https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=23295

@inproceedings{Mullins2026_23295,
  author = {Mullins, Sarabeth S. and Hermes, Sampedro Llopis},
  title = {{Comparing Three Movement Simulation Algorithms from Discrete Impulse Responses}},
  booktitle = {AVARIG 2026: Audio for Virtual and Augmented Reality and Immersive Games},
  note = {Paper 10333},
  year = {2026},
  month = jun,
  publisher = {Audio Engineering Society},
  url = {https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=23295}
}

TY  - CPAPER
TI  - Comparing Three Movement Simulation Algorithms from Discrete Impulse Responses
AU  - Mullins, Sarabeth S.
AU  - Hermes, Sampedro Llopis
T2  - AVARIG 2026: Audio for Virtual and Augmented Reality and Immersive Games
M1  - Paper 10333
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/06/30
UR  - https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=23295
PB  - Audio Engineering Society
LA  - en
AB  - Reproducing the acoustic consequences of source or receiver motion from a set of discrete static room impulse responses (RIRs) is a fundamental challenge in spatial audio processing, with direct relevance to the generation of training and evaluation data for machine learning systems operating on reverberant speech and audio. This paper presents a comparative evaluation of three offline algorithms for acoustic motion simulation, two of which are ports of previously published methods and one of which is an independent implementation conceptually related to prior work. All three methods are evaluated using two complementary validation approaches: an objective comparison of interaural time difference (ITD) estimation for a moving source against a geometrically derived analytic reference, and a perceptual MUSHRA evaluation in which algorithm outputs for a moving receiver are rated against real-world binaural recordings as the reference. Results indicate that frequency-domain interpolation between neighbouring impulse responses provides the most accurate ITD reproduction and the highest perceptual similarity to the reference under music and noise stimuli, while nearest-neighbour switching produces the most pronounced artefacts under broadband excitation. Time-domain crossfading between fully convolved signals yields intermediate performance, achieving parity with frequency-domain interpolation for speech and noise but falling significantly behind for music. The combination of ITD-based objective analysis and MUSHRA perceptual evaluation proved informative in characterising method differences, and the two measures converged on a consistent performance ordering across methods.
ER  -