Distance Perception in a loudspeaker-based room auralization system

A loudspeaker-based room auralization (LoRA) system has been recently proposed that efficiently combines modern room acoustic modeling techniques with high-order Ambisonics (HOA) auralization to generate virtual auditory environments (VAEs). The reproduction of the distance of sound events in such VAE is very important for its fidelity.

A direct-scaling distance perception experiment was conducted to evaluate the LoRA system including the use of near-field control (NFC) for HOA. Experimental results showed that (i) loudspeaker-based auralization in the LoRA system provides similar distance perception to that of the corresponding real environment and that (ii) NFC-HOA provides a significant increase in the range of perceived distances for near sound sources as compared to standard HOA.