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Conference Paper

Directional perception of virtual sources in an automotive environment: experiments and models

Authors: De Schaepmeester, Benoit; Fines, Bernard; Charpentier, Thomas; Parizet, Etienne

AES 2024 International Conference on Automotive Audio · Paper 1 · June 2024

Abstract

The loudspeaker configuration in a car is far from a conventional stereophonic one. The aim of this study was to evaluate the consequences of such an unusual configuration on the perception of the localisation of virtual sound sources. Experiments on the directional perception of virtual sources in an automotive environment were performed using conventional loudspeaker configurations. The sources, consisting of broadband pink noise bursts, were laterally spatialised using the Virtual Based Amplitude Panning (VBAP) method. Participants were asked to point their nose in the direction of the perceived sound source. Their head movements were recorded by a headtracker. The differences between the perceived directions and those predicted by the VBAP method in a classical stereo configuration were measured. In addition, several models of azimuth perception were compared with the experimental data. An extended energy vector model, taking into account the precedence effect, gave results in agreement with the experimental data. The model inputs are the relative position, time delay and level of each loudspeaker. This model could be used as a tool for assessing spatial restitution, loudspeaker positioning and audio tuning.

Details

Published in
AES 2024 International Conference on Automotive Audio
Paper number
1
Publication date
June 17, 2024
Session subject
Localisation Perception; Objective Assessment; Stereophony; Precedence Effect; Hearing Models; Virtual Source
Affiliation
Stellantis, NVH department, France; Stellantis, NVH department, France; Laboratoire Vibrations Acoustique (LVA), INSA Lyon, France, and Stellantis, NVH department, France; Laboratoire Vibrations Acoustique (LVA), INSA Lyon, France (See document for exact affiliation information.)
Type
Conference Paper