Survey of Methods for

Modeling Sound Propagation in

Interactive Virtual Environment Systems

Abstract
This paper surveys concepts, algorithms, and systems for modeling sound propagation in
interactive virtual environment applications. First, we review physically-based geometric al-
gorithms for modeling the propagation of early arriving sound waves. Second, we describe
perceptually-based statistical techniques that provide late reverberation effects. Finally, we
compare auditory display systems that produce spatialized sounds using headphones or speak-
ers. Overall, the paper provides the salient information required for incorporation of spatialized
sounds into interactive virtual environment simulation systems.

1
1 Introduction

Interactive virtual environment systems combine audio and video to simulate the experience of
immersive exploration of a three-dimensional virtual world by rendering the environment as per-

ceived from the viewpoint of an observer moving under real-time control by the user. Most prior
research in virtual environment systems has focused on visualization (i.e., methods for rendering
more realistic images or for increasing image refresh rates), while relatively little attention has
been paid to auralization (i.e., rendering spatialized sound based on acoustical modeling). Yet, it

is clear that we must pay more attention to producing realistic sound in order to create a com-
plete immersive experience in which aural cues combine with visual cues to support more natural
interaction within a virtual environment.
Spatialized sound effects are important in immersive virtual environment applications because

they combine with visual cues to aid localization of objects, separation of simultaneous sound sig-
nals, and formation of spatial impressions of an environment [12]. For instance, binaural auditory
cues are essential in localizing objects outside a user’s field of view, such as when a car comes
around a blind corner in a driving simulation, or when a soldier must find a sharpshooter in a mil-

itary training application. They also help users separate simultaneous sounds, such as when we
listen to one of many speakers at a cocktail party. Finally, qualitative changes in sound reverbera-
tion can enhance and reinforce visual comprehension of the environment, such as when a user of
a video game moves from a large stone cave into a small wooden house. Experiments have shown

that more accurate acoustic modeling provides a user with a stronger sense of presence in virtual
environments [31].
In this paper, we review basic auralization methods for 3D virtual environment applications. A
basic processing pipeline is shown in Figure 1. The input to an auralization system is a descrip-

tion of a virtual environment (e.g., a set of polygons), an audio source location, an audio receiver
location, and an input audio signal. The auralization system computes a model for the propagation
of sound waves through the environment and constructs digital filter(s) (e.g., impulse response(s))
that encode the delays and attenuations of sound traveling along different propagation paths. Con-

2
volution of the input audio signal with the filter(s) yields a spatialized sound signal for output with
an auditory display device.

Source Receiver

Virtual Acoustic
Environment Modeling
Input
Audio Signals
Filter(s)

Auditory
Display

Spatialized
Audio Signal(s)

Figure 1: Basic auralization pipeline.

The following sections of this paper describes the auralization process in detail. Specifically,
Section 2 introduces the problem of modeling sound propagation more formally and discusses its
similarities and differences with respect to global illumination. The next three sections describe

different computational modeling approaches: finite element methods, geometrical simulations,

and artificial reverberation models. They are followed by a discussion of how spatialized sound
can be output with 3D auditory displays. Finally, the last section contains a brief summary and a
discussion of topics for future work.

2 Overview

At a fundamental level, the problem of modeling sound propagation is to find a solution to an

integral equation expressing the wave-field at some point in space in terms of the wave-field at

other points (or equivalently on surrounding surfaces). For sound simulations, the wave equation
is described by the Helmoltz-Kirchoff integral theorem [14], which is similar to Kajiya’s rendering
equation [63], but also incorporates time and phase dependencies.
The difficult computational challenge is to model the scattering of sound waves in a 3D envi-

ronment. Sound waves traveling from a source (e.g., a speaker) and arriving at a receiver (e.g.,

3
a microphone) travel along a multitude of propagation paths representing different sequences of
reflections, diffractions, and refractions at surfaces of the environment (Figure 2). The effect of
these propagation paths is to add reverberation (e.g., echoes) to the original source signal as it

reaches the receiver. So, auralizing a sound for a particular source, receiver, and environment can
be achieved by applying filter(s) to the source signal that model the acoustical effects of sound
propagation and scattering in the environment.

S R

Figure 2: Sound propagation paths from a source (S) to a receiver (R).

Since sound and light are both wave phenomena, modeling sound propagation is similar to
global illumination. However, sound has several characteristics different from light which intro-
duce new and interesting challenges:

• Wavelength: the wavelengths of audible sound range between 0.02 and 17 meters (for
20KHz and 20Hz, respectively), which are five to seven orders of magnitude longer than
visible light. Therefore, as shown in Figure 3, reflections are primarily specular for large,
flat surfaces (such as walls) and diffraction of sound occurs around obstacles of the same size

as the wavelength (such as tables), while small objects (like coffee mugs) have little effect
on the sound field (for all but the highest wavelengths). As a result, when compared to com-
puter graphics, acoustics simulations tend to use 3D models with far less geometric detail.
But, they must find propagation paths with diffractions and specular reflections efficiently,

and they must consider the effects for different obstacles at a range of wavelengths.

• Speed: at 343 meters per second, the speed of sound in air is six orders of magnitude less
than light, and sound propagation delays are perceptible to humans. Thus, acoustic models
must compute the exact time/frequency distribution of the propagation paths, and sound

4
 must be auralized by convolution with the corresponding impulse response that represents
the delay and amplitude of sounds arriving along different propagation paths. In contrast,
the propagation delay of light can be ignored and only the energy steady-state response must

be computed.

• Coherence: sound is a coherent wave phenomenon, and interference between out-of-phase

waves can be significant. Accordingly, acoustical simulations must consider phase when
summing the cumulative contribution of many propagation paths to a receiver. More specifi-

cally, since the phase of the wave traveling along each propagation path is determined by the
path length, acoustical models must compute accurate path lengths (up to a small percentage
of the wavelength). In contrast, most light sources (except lasers) emit largely incoherent
waves, and thus lighting simulations simply sum the power of different propagation paths.

• Dynamic range: the human ear is sensitive to five orders of magnitude difference in sound
amplitude [12], and arrival time differences allow some high-order reflections to be audible.
Therefore, as compared to computer graphics, acoustical simulations usually aim to com-
pute several times more reflections, and the statistical time/frequency effects of late sound

reverberation are much more significant than for global illumination.

• Latency and update rate: the timing requirements of acoustical simulations are more strin-
gent than for their visual counterparts. System latency and update rates can have significant
impact on the perceived quality of any virtual acoustics simulation. For instance, [99] shows

that binaural virtual source localization is degraded when overall system latency is larger
than 96ms. Similarly, an update rate of 10Hz degrades the speed at which the user is able to
localize virtual sources and produces azimuth errors. Refer to [131] for more details.

Despite these differences, many of the same techniques are used in acoustic modeling as are

used for global illumination. In both cases, a major difficulty arises from the wave-field discontinu-
ities caused by occlusions and specular highlights, resulting in large variations over small portions

5
 Sound Wave Interference

Rigid Surface
λ
R
S

Rigid Surface λ/2 λ/4

Figure 3: Sound waves impingent upon a sur- Figure 4: Interference can occur when two
face usually reflect specularly and/or diffract at sound waves meet.
edges.

of the integration domain (i.e. surfaces and/or directions). Due to these discontinuities, no general-
purpose, analytic formula can compute the wave-field at a given point, and solutions must rely upon
sampling or subdivision of the integration domain into components that can be solved efficiently
and accurately.

Prior computational methods for simulating the propagation of sound through an environment
can be classified into three major approaches: 1) numerical solutions to the wave equation (e.g., fi-
nite and boundary element methods), 2) high frequency approximations based on geometric prop-
agation paths (e.g., image source methods, ray tracing, and beam tracing), and 3) perceptually-

based statistical models (e.g., feedback delay networks). The following three sections review these
approaches. They are followed by a discussion of signal processing and auditory displays for
auralization.

3 Finite and Boundary Element Methods

Finite and boundary element methods solve the wave equation (and associated boundary condi-
tions), subdividing space (and possibly time) into elements [19, 32, 68, 69] (Figure 5). The wave

equation is then expressed as a discrete set of linear equations for these elements. The boundary
integral form of the wave equation (i.e., Green’s or Helmoltz-Kirchoff’s equation) can be solved
by subdividing only the boundaries of the environment and assuming the pressure (or particle ve-
locity) is a linear combination of a finite number of basis functions on the elements. One can

either impose that the wave equation is satisfied at a set of discrete points (collocation method) or

6
ensure a global convergence criteria (Galerkin method). In the limit, finite element techniques pro-
vide an accurate solution to the wave equation. However, they are mainly used at low frequencies
and for simple environments since the compute time and storage space increase dramatically with

frequency.

Figure 5: Boundary element mesh.

Finite element techniques have also been used to model acoustic energy transfer between sur-

faces [86, 124] (as in radiosity [47]). While they can be used to compute energy decay charac-
teristics in a given environment, they do not allow direct reconstruction of an impulse response
for auralization. Instead, they require the use of an underlying statistical model and a random
phase assumption [75]. Moreover, most surfaces act primarily as specular or glossy reflectors

for sound. Although extensions to non-diffuse environments have been proposed in computer
graphics [106, 21], they are often time and memory consuming. Accordingly, finite and boundary
element methods are not generally used for interactive virtual environment applications.

4 Geometric Methods

Geometrical acoustic simulations model the acoustical effects of an environment with computa-
tions based on ray theory. They make the assumption that sound wavelengths are significantly
smaller than the size of obstacles, and thus they are valid only for high-frequency sounds.

The general approach is similar to methods used in computer graphics. A geometric algo-
rithm is used to find significant ray paths along which sound can travel from a source to a receiver

7
(Figure 6), and mathematical models are used to approximate the filters corresponding to source
emission patterns, atmospheric scattering, surface reflectance, edge diffraction, and receiver sen-
sitivity for sound waves traveling along each path. Finally, an impulse response is constructed by

combining the filter(s) for each propagation path.

0.004

0.002

-0.002

-0.004

-0.006

-0.008

-0.01

-0.012
0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3
time (s)
(a) Impulse response (b) Propagation paths

Figure 6: Impulse response (left) representing 353 propagation paths (right) for up to ten orders
of specular reflections between a point source and a point receiver (omnidirectional) in a coupled-
rooms environment (two rooms connected by an open door).

Impulse responses representing acoustic environments are usually considered in three parts: (1)
direct sound, (2) early reflections, and (3) late reverberation (Figure 7). Direct sound represents the

earliest arriving (and usually strongest) sound wave. Early reflections describe the sound waves that
arrive within the first te milliseconds of the impulse response (e.g., 20ms ≤ T e ≤ 80ms [9, 50]),
when the density of reverberations is low enough that the human ear is able to distinguish individual
paths (e.g., less than 2,000 reflections per second) [24]. These early reflections (and possibly

diffractions) provide a human listener with most of the spatial information about an environment,
because of their relatively high strengths, recognizable directionalities, and distinct arrival times [9,
51, 89, 128]. In the late reverberation phase, when the sound has reflected off many surfaces in
the environment, the impulse response resembles an exponentially decaying noise function with

overall low power [9] and with such a high density that the ear is no longer able to distinguish them
independently [24].
Geometric algorithms currently provide the most practical and accurate method for modeling

8
 Early Late
Reflections Reverberations

Amplitude
Direct Time Delay
Sound

Figure 7: Direct, early, and late parts of an impulse response.

the early part of an impulse response for high-frequency sounds. The delays and attenuations of the
direct sound and early reflections/diffractions are computed explicitly, and thus simulated impulse
responses contain the main perceptually significant peaks used for localization. Also, correct phase

and directivity of sound waves can be obtained from the lengths and vectors of computed paths.
However, geometric methods are generally practical and accurate only for the early part of the
response, as the errors in geometric approximations and the computational complexity of geomet-
ric algorithms increase with larger numbers of reflections and diffractions. As a result, common

practice is to use geometric methods to find early reflections and to fill in the late reverberations
with statistical methods (discussed in the next section).

4.1 Enumerating Propagation Paths

The first challenge of geometric acoustic modeling is to enumerate the significant propagation

paths along which sound waves travel from a source to a receiver. Since rays follow the shortest
path when the propagation medium is homogeneous, the problem for sound traveling through air
reduces to finding piecewise-linear paths from source to receiver with vertices on edges/surfaces

of obstacles. Three approaches are most commonly used to address this problem: image sources,
ray tracing, and beam tracing.

4.1.1 Image Sources

Image source methods [2, 13] compute specular reflection paths by considering virtual sources

generated by mirroring the location of the audio source, S, over each polygonal surface of the en-

9
vironment (see Figure 8). For each virtual source, S i , a specular reflection path can be constructed
by iterative intersection of a line segment from the source position to the receiver position, R, with
the reflecting surface planes (such a path is shown for virtual source S c in Figure 8). Specular

reflection paths are computed up to any order by recursive generation of virtual sources.

Sd
d R c
Sc
a S
b
Sa Sb
Figure 8: Image source method.

The primary advantage of image source methods is their robustness. They guarantee that all

specular paths up to a given order or reverberation time are found. However, image source methods
model only specular reflection, and their expected computational complexity grows exponentially.
In general, O(nr ) virtual sources must be generated for r reflections in environments with n sur-
face planes. Moreover, in all but the simplest environments (e.g., a box), complex validity/visibility

checks must be performed for each of the O(nr ) virtual sources since not all of the virtual sources
represent physically realizable specular reflection paths [13]. For instance, a virtual source gen-
erated by reflection over the non-reflective side of a surface is “invalid” [13]. Likewise, a virtual
source whose reflection is blocked by another surface in the environment or intersects a point on

a surface’s plane which is outside the surface’s boundary (e.g., S a in Figure 8) is “invisible” [13].
During recursive generation of virtual sources, descendents of invalid virtual sources can be ig-
nored. However, descendents of invisible virtual sources must still be considered, as higher-order
reflections may generate visible virtual sources (consider mirroring S a over surface d). Due to

the computational demands of O(nr ) visibility checks, image source methods are practical for
modeling only a few specular reflections in simple environments [72].

10
 In the special case of box-shaped environment, image source methods are very efficient. Due
to the rectilinear symmetries of a box, image sources representing different permutations of specu-
larly reflecting surfaces all fall on the same location. They tile space in a rectilinear grid pattern as

shown in Figure 9, which makes construction of virtual sources efficient and simple to code. More
importantly, the set of virtual sources lying at the same location partition potential receiver points
inside of the box according to visibility. That is, for any set of specular reflections, every potential
receiver point is visible for one and only one permutation, which eliminates the need for expensive

visibility tests. For these reasons, some 3D audio systems approximate complex environments as
a box and only modeled early specular reflections physically (e.g., [35]).

S
R

Figure 9: Construction of image sources for a 2D box-shaped environment. The audio source is
labeled ‘S.’ Virtual sources appear as unlabeled dots. The “walls” of the box-shaped room are
shown as wide lines near the middle. The thinner lines forming a rectilinear tiling pattern are
included only for visualization purposes.

4.1.2 Ray Tracing

Ray tracing methods [73, 133] find reverberation paths between a source and receiver by generating
rays emanating from the source position and following them through the environment until an
appropriate set of rays has been found that reach a representation of the receiver position (see
Figure 10).

Monte Carlo path tracing methods consider randomly generated paths from the source to the
receiver [63]. For instance, the Metropolis Light Transport algorithm [125] generates a sequence of
light transport paths by randomly mutating a single current path by adding, deleting, or replacing

11
 S
R

Figure 10: Ray tracing method.

vertices. Mutated paths are accepted according to probabilities based on the estimated contribution
they make to the solution. As contributing paths are found, they are logged and then mutated
further to generate new paths in a Markov chain. Mutation strategies and acceptance probabilities
are chosen to insure that the method is unbiased, stratified, and ergodic.
A primary advantage of these methods is their simplicity. They depend only on ray-surface in-
tersection calculations, which are relatively easy to implement and have computational complexity
that grows sublinearly with the number of surfaces in the model. Another advantage is gener-

ality. As each ray-surface intersection is found, paths of specular reflection, diffuse reflection,
diffraction, and refraction can be sampled [22, 63], thereby modeling arbitrary types of indirect
reverberation, even for models with curved surfaces.
The primary disadvantages of path tracing methods stem from the fact that the continuous 5D

space of rays is sampled by a discrete set of paths, leading to aliasing and errors in predicted room
responses [76]. For instance, in ray tracing, the receiver position and diffracting edges are often
approximated by volumes of space (in order to admit intersections with infinitely thin rays), which
can lead to false hits and paths counted multiple times [76]. Moreover, important reverberation

paths may be missed by all samples. In order to minimize the likelihood of large errors, path tracing
systems often generate a large number of samples, which requires a large amount of computation.
Another disadvantage of path tracing is that the results are dependent on a particular receiver
position, and thus these methods are not directly applicable in virtual environment applications

where either the source or receiver is moving continuously.

12
4.1.3 Beam Tracing

Beam tracing methods [25, 52] classify propagation paths from a source by recursively tracing

pyramidal beams (i.e., sets of rays) through the environment (see Figure 11). Briefly, for each
beam, polygons in the environment are considered for intersection with the beam in front-to-back
visibility order (i.e., such that no polygon is considered until all others that at least partially occlude
it have already been considered). As intersecting polygons are detected, the original beam is

clipped to remove the shadow region, a transmission beam is constructed matching the shadow
region, a reflection beam is constructed by mirroring the transmission beam over the polygon’s
plane, and possibly other beams are formed to model other types of scattering. This method has
been used in a variety of application areas, including acoustic modeling [25, 37, 38, 39, 85, 110,

129], global illumination [18, 36, 46, 48, 52, 130], radio wave propagation [34, 33], and visibility
determination [40, 55, 79, 116].

S S’
Original
Beam
b c
a
Reflection Transmission
Beam Beam

Figure 11: Beam tracing method.

As compared to image source methods, the advantage of beam tracing is that fewer virtual
sources must be considered for environments with arbitrary geometry. Since each beam represents
the region of space for which a corresponding virtual source (at the apex of the beam) is visible,
higher-order virtual sources must be considered only for reflections of polygons intersecting the

beam. For instance, in Figure 12, consider the virtual source S a , which results from reflection of S
over polygon a. The corresponding reflection beam, R a , contains exactly the set of receiver points
for which Sa is valid and visible. Similarly, Ra intersects exactly the set of polygons (c and d) for
which second-order reflections are possible after specular reflection off polygon a. Other polygons

13
(b, e, f , and g) need not be considered for second order specular reflections after a. Beam tracing
allows the recursion tree of virtual sources to be pruned significantly. On the other hand, the image
source method is more efficient for a box-shaped environment for which a regular lattice of virtual

sources can be constructed that are guaranteed to be visible for all receiver locations [2].
c
b d
Ra
Sa a
S e
g
f

Figure 12: Beam tracing culls invisible virtual sources.

As compared to path tracing methods, the benefit of beam tracing is that it takes advantage of
spatial coherence, as each beam-surface intersection represents an infinite number of ray-surface

intersections. Polyhedral beam tracing does not suffer from sampling artifacts of ray tracing [76]
or the overlap problems of cone tracing [3, 126], since the entire 2D space of directions leaving
the source can be covered by beams exactly. As a result, beam tracing can enumerate all poten-
tial propagation paths up to some termination criteria without risk of missing any. This feature

is particularly important for modeling diffraction [123]. Also, it enables bidirectional methods
that find propagation paths more efficiently by combine beaming traced from both sources and
receivers [39].
For interactive applications, the main advantage of beam tracing is that beams can be precom-

puted, during an off-line phase, and stored in a data structure (e.g., a beam tree) for later evaluation
of reverberation paths at interactive rates [37]. For instance, beams emanating from a station-
ary source can be precomputed, enabling fast construction of reverberation paths to an arbitrarily
moving receiver (Figure 13) [37]. Alternatively, beams from predicted source regions can be up-

dated asynchronously with time-critical computing strategies to enable interactive generation of

reverberation paths between simultaneously moving source and receivers [39].
The primary disadvantage of beam tracing is that the geometric operations required to trace

14
Figure 13: Beams (left) can be precomputed and then queried quickly to update propagation paths
(right) at interactive rates.

beams through a 3D model (i.e., intersection and clipping) are relatively complex, as each beam
may be reflected and/or obstructed by several surfaces. Several methods have been proposed to
accelerate these geometric operations, including ones based on BSP-trees [25], cell adjacency

graphs [55, 33, 37, 39, 79, 116], layers of 2D triangulations [34], and medial axis approximations
[71, 78, 96]. These methods tend to work well only for simple scenes or densely-occluded envi-
ronments (e.g., cities or building interiors). Beam tracing also is difficult in scenes with curved
surfaces and non-linear refracting objects, although conservative beam tracing methods combined

with validation of constructed paths is probably suitable for these situations [39].

4.2 Modeling Attenuation, Reflection, and Scattering

Once geometric propagation paths have been computed, they are combined to form filter(s) for

spatializing a sound signal. The challenge here is to model the attenuation and scattering of sound
as it travels along each path, taking into account source emission patterns, distance attenuation,
atmospheric scattering, reflectance functions, diffraction models, and receiver sensitivity. These
effects correspond to source models, distance falloff, fog, and bidirectional reflectance distribution

functions (BRDFs), and camera response in computer graphics. As in graphics, sound propaga-
tion models are approximations, and for each model, there are usually several alternatives which
provide trade-offs between computational expense and accuracy.

15
4.2.1 Distance Attenuation and Atmospheric Scattering

Sound intensity gets attenuated with distance. In virtual acoustics, sound sources are usually mod-

eled as points – i.e. infinitely small points in space radiating a spherical wave-front. In such a case,
the free-field intensity of the radiation decays with the inverse square of the distance (i.e., in free
space, without interfering obstacles). Since we are usually interested in sound pressure rather than
intensity, this translates into the well known inverse-distance law:

P (R) = P (O)/r,

where R is the receiving location, O is the center of radiation and r is the Euclidean distance in 3D
space between R and O.

High frequencies also get attenuated with distance due to atmospheric scattering. The expres-
sion for a frequency-dependant attenuation coefficient is provided by the ANSI acoustical stan-
dard [5] (an ISO equivalent is also available).

4.2.2 Doppler Shifting

When a sound source S and/or a receiver R are moving relative to each other, sound waves undergo
a compression or dilatation in the direction of the relative speed of the motion. This compression
or dilatation creates a modification of the frequency of the received sound relative to the emitted
sound. This effect, which was first discovered by Christian Johann Doppler in 1842, is called

Doppler shifting.
The Doppler shift between the frequency of the emitted signal and the received signal can be
expressed as (see Figure 14):
fR 1 − n·vc R
∆Doppler = = ,
fS 1 − n·vc S
~
where vS is the speed of the source, vR the speed of the receiver and n = SR
~
kSRk
is the source-to-
receiver direction.

Doppler shifting can also be expressed in time domain. If we note τ (t), the time-variant prop-
agation delay between the moving source and receiver, the signal reaching the receiver at time t is

16
 vS
S
n

vR R

Figure 14: Notations for Doppler shifting.

expressed as:
r(t) = s(t − τ (t)),

where s(t) is the signal emitted by the source at time t. The received signal can thus be expressed
by resampling the emitted signal according to the propagation delay τ (t), which can be expressed
as:
1
τ (t) = kR(t) − S(t − τ (t))k,
c
where R(t) and S(t) are the relative locations of the receiver and source at t (note that this expres-

sion considers a mobile source relative to a fixed receiver at time t). This equation is not linear
in τ and cannot be solved directly. But, it can be approximated by a recursive process [90]. A
comparison of time- and frequency-domain approaches is provided in [122].

4.2.3 Sound Reflection Models

For virtual acoustics applications, surfaces are generally assumed to be pure specular reflectors
of sound waves (Figure 15). This assumption applies when the size of bumps on a surface are
significantly smaller than the wavelengths of sounds, and when obstacles are significantly bigger

than sound wavelengths.

The most common sound reflection model, valid for plane waves and infinite planar surfaces,
expresses the complex pressure reflection coefficient as:

ζ(f )cosθ − 1
R(θ, f ) = ,
ζ(f )cosθ + 1

where f is the frequency and ζ(f ) = Z(f )/ρc is the ration of the frequency-dependent specific

17
 n
n
di θi θr
dr di

(a) (b)

Figure 15: (a) specular reflection: θr = θi , (b) diffuse lambertian reflection.

impedance of the material to the characteristic impedance ρ c of the medium 1 . Each frequency
component of the original signal must be multiplied by the complex reflection coefficient to yield
the final reflected pressure. The exact expression for the reflection of a spherical wave off an
impedant surface is far more complicated [117] and, to the authors knowledge, has not made its

way into interactive acoustics simulations.

For locally reacting surfaces, it can be assumed that ζ is independent of the angle and thus can
be considered an intrinsic property of the material. Some experiments [113] have shown that using
a scalar instead of a complex valued coefficient can lead to satisfying results in many cases. For

more complex surfaces, such as porous materials, the impedance is itself a function of the incident
direction. Several impedance models can be found in the literature [29, 8]. Complex impedances
or pressure reflection coefficients can be measured on a sample of the material [67, 20], although
good measurements are usually difficult to obtain.

When a significant amount of surface detail is present, a common technique in room acoustics
simulation is to model the surface as a simple plane and consider it as a pure diffuse (Lambertian)
reflector. This is analogous to a diffuse surface in graphics. However, unlike graphics, it is difficult
to model diffuse reflections with a single attenuation coefficient. Due to the possibility of inter-

ferences, diffuse reflection in sound cannot be represented by a single, independent propagation

path. Hence, longer filters must be used to model the contribution of all possible diffusely reflected
paths. Such filters are usually modeled using a colored noise signal, whose envelope is related to
the amount of energy exchanged between surfaces. For additional details for the use of diffuse
1
ρ c = 414kg.m−2.s−1 for air in normal conditions

18
reflection in room acoustics and auralization, see [17, 122, 75].

4.2.4 Sound Diffraction Models

When the wavelength of the sound wave is similar to the geometric feature size, diffraction be-

comes an essential effect. While this is not a major phenomenon in computer graphics (except for
extreme cases, like the surface of a CD-ROM [107]), it cannot be ignored in sound simulation,
especially when large obstacles are present between the source and the listener.
Geometrical Theory of Diffraction (GTD) and its extension, the Uniform Theory of Diffraction

provide a way of computing a diffraction filter for a single propagation path involving diffraction
over a polyhedral edge in an environment [64, 70, 82]. Because the diffraction for an entire edge
can be approximated by a single (shortest) path, this model fits well with the geometrical acoustics
approaches discussed in these notes, and it is practical to use in interactive virtual environment

applications [123].

R
S θi θd

Figure 16: The Geometric Theory of Diffraction approximates diffraction of a ray incident to a
wedge as a cone of diffracted rays, such that θi = θd (left). For each diffraction, a complex
diffraction coefficient can be computed. Values of the UTD coefficients are visualized on the right
for point-source radiating over a half-plane.

According to the GTD, a ray incident on an edge in the environment gives rise to a cone of

diffracted rays such that the angle between a diffracted ray and the edge is the same as the angle
between the incident ray and the edge (Figure 16). A filter for the effect of the diffracting edge can
be modeled by a complex frequency-dependent diffraction coefficient [82]. For additional details
on the expression of the coefficient and how it can be used for virtual acoustics applications, we

refer the reader to [123].

19
 Other models, closer to a finite element formalism, give a more accurate time domain model of
the diffraction filter [114, 118]. However, they require dense sampling of the edges in elementary
point sources to construct the filter and thus are not as well suited for interactive applications.

4.2.5 Sound Occlusion and Transmission Models

Several occlusion models are also available as a simpler alternative to diffraction models in the
case of obstruction by a large obstacle. In this case, the occlusion results in a “muffling” effect
which can be modeled by a frequency-dependent scalar attenuation. The attenuation is usually

modeled as a simple re-equalization where the input signal is decomposed in several frequency
bands that are scaled independently. A way to estimate approximate attenuation factors is to use
Fresnel ellipsoids to estimate a visibility factor that depends on frequency [124]. An even simpler
model, used in most audio rendering APIs, globally attenuates the signal and then filters it using a

low-pass filter of variable cut-off frequency [23]. Direct transmission through a wall is also often
modeled using such a technique.

Figure 17: A 3D view of a virtual source (right), microphone (left), obstacles and first Fresnel
ellipsoids computed at 400 and 1000 Hz. Occlusion ratio of the ellipsoids can be used to derive a
frequency-dependent visibility factor [124].

4.3 Signal Processing for Geometric Acoustics

Once the acoustical effect of each sound propagation path has been modeled, we can construct

signal processing filters that take an (anechoic) input audio signal and produce an output audio
signal spatialized according to the simulated environment (Figure 18). In this section, we present

20
a basic signal processing pipeline for auralizing sound from geometric propagation paths. Good
general overviews of this process appear in [77, 66]. A recent description of auralization for a
virtual environment can be found in [100].

The signal processing for each geometric path generally consists of 3 phases: 1) a resampling
phase, 2) a “filtering” phase, and 3) a spatial output phase. We will present each phase separately.
But, they can be grouped together for computational efficiency. As in most issues addressed in
this paper, every phase of the pipeline can be implemented using algorithms of various complexity

depending on the desired trade-off between accuracy and computational cost.

Geometry

nvolut

 
Co

ion
Propagation filter 


*
ths nd output
modeling

Spatial processing

Anechoic recording
 
or sy esized signal

Figure 18: Auralization pipeline: From the geometry, propagation paths are constructed between
each sound source and the listener. Then, for each propagation path, a digital filter is created and
is convolved with the source signal. Spatial processing can be implemented in the pipeline to
reproduce 3D positional audio effects.

A widely-used signal processing pipeline is shown in Figure 19 (e.g. [124, 132]). Each sound
path is processed independently as follows. The input signal is first resampled according to the
length of the path (and thus the propagation delay). This stage is usually implemented in time

domain using a variable delay line (note that variable delay lines account for the proper Doppler
shift). To implement the integer part of the delay, the signal is simply delayed by the corresponding
number of samples. The fractional part can be implemented by interpolating between the two
closest samples. Linear interpolation is used most often and generally gives good results. See [134,

21
112] for more details on interpolation algorithms. Next, the signal is convolved with a sequence
of digital filters representing the effects of reflectance, diffraction, and other propagation effects
along a propagation path. Finally, spatial filters are applied to process the signal for output with a

3D auditory display.

length (r) 


   y
angles source signal

del line
delay


   ers of

 impulse resampled
response sound signal

convolution
1/r

final sound

Figure 19: Signal processing pipeline for a sound path.

An alternative signal processing pipeline constructs the complete impulse response of the en-
vironment by superimposing all the filters for each propagation path. Convolution with the input
audio signal is then delayed to the final stage of the process at the expense of having to con-

volve a longer filter. Although specific hardware is available to achieve such long convolutions in
real-time [97] (e.g. Lake DSP’s Huron workstation), this method is not well adapted to dynamic
environments since long filters cannot easily be interpolated.
When the source and the receiver can move around during an interactive simulation, the at-

tributes of geometric paths (length in particular) and the corresponding DSP parameters (delays,
etc.) are usually modified at a rate slower than the audio sampling rate, which can cause clicking
or popping artifacts to appear in the output audio. Hence, signal processing parameters (e.g. delay)
are usually computed for blocks of samples and then linearly interpolated for every sample (from

the previous block to the next). This introduces a latency in the pipeline corresponding to the size
of the audio processing block. Another option is to use an extrapolation mechanism which allows
to run the auralization process and the DSP-parameters update process at two different rates [119].

22
For instance, geometric calculations are performed at 10-20 Hz, while audio rendering is per-
formed at 20-100 Hz. The extrapolation mechanism always provides the audio rendering pipeline
with smooth parameters to be used for DSP operations and is well suited to approaches similar

to [39]. This can also be useful if the updates of the parameters are irregular or slow (e.g. heavy
processor load, update through a lossy network transmission, etc.).

5 Artificial Reverberation Algorithms

Another approach to providing reverberation in a real-time system is based on parametric models.

For example, an artificial reverberator is shown in Figure 20. In this case, two input signals are
delayed and passed to the early reflection and late reverberation blocks. The early reflections are

created by tapping the input delays and passing the summed signals through all-pass filters. While
this approach does not provide an accurate model of a specific acoustic environment, it does pro-
vide plausible models for late reverberation, and it provides a simple and efficient parameterization
of synthetic reverberation effects. Thus, it is commonly used for providing late reverberations in

video games.

Figure 20: Example artificial reverberator.

The historical and theoretical background of artificial reverberation algorithms is reviewed

in [42] and [59]. The use of feedback delay networks (FDNs) for modeling late reverberation is

23
justified in the framework of the statistical theory of reverberation [74] and relies on the condition
that sufficient overlap (or “density”) of acoustic modes in the frequency domain and of reflections
in the time domain are achieved [102, 59, 57]. Under this assumption, late reflections (both in a

real room or in the reverberator’s response) can be modeled as a Gaussian exponentially decaying
random signal, characterized by a spectral energy envelope, denoted E(ω) and the reverberation
time (or decay time) vs. frequency, denoted T r (ω) [93, 59, 57]. Hence, such techniques can
complement a geometrical simulation in order to efficiently reproduce late reverberation effects

while maintaining an accurate modeling of the early part of the reverberation.

5.1 Feedback Delay Network (FDN)

In a feedback delay network reverberator, the resonating behavior of an environment is charac-

terized by a feedback matrix A which connects the outputs and inputs of the delay units in the
network, according to the model introduced by Stautner and Puckette [108] (Figure 21).

Figure 21: Basic feedback delay network.

A general framework for optimizing the topology of the FDN and the control of reverbera-
tion decay characteristics independently was proposed in [58, 59]. In this framework, the modal
density and the echo density of the reverberation are controlled by adjusting the delay lengths,
while the decay characteristics are controlled by associating a frequency-dependent attenuation

to each delay unit. A “prototype network” is defined as any network having only non-decaying
and non-increasing eigenmodes (which implies that all system poles have unit magnitude, and
corresponds to an infinite reverberation time). Associating an attenuation g i = αmi to each de-

24
lay unit (where mi is the delay length expressed in samples) then has the effect of multiplying
all poles by α, i.e. multiplying the reference impulse response by a decaying exponential enve-
lope [59, 26]. Frequency-dependent decay characteristics, specified by the reverberation time vs.

frequency T r(ω), are obtained by use of “absorptive filters” making each attenuation g i frequency-
dependent:
20log10 |gi (ω)| = −60τi /T r(ω), (i = 1, ..N), (1)

where τi = mi T is the delay length expressed in seconds (T is the sample period).

An equivalent framework for reverberator design is given by digital waveguide networks (DWNs) [98].
A DWN is defined as a set of bi-directional delay lines connected by “scattering junctions” (or
nodes), modeling a set of interconnected acoustic tubes. In this approach, a reverberator is de-
signed by building a prototype DWN having lossless scattering junctions and then introducing

frequency-dependent losses in this network. The practical implementation involves splitting each
bi-directional delay line into a pair of (mono-directional) delay units.
P
The total delay length i τi in the network’s feedback loop equals the modal density of the ar-
tificial reverberator (i.e., the average number of eigenmodes per Hz). Perceptually adequate modal
P
overlap can be achieved by making i τi at least equal to one fourth of the decay time [102, 59].
With an appropriate choice of the feedback matrix and care to avoid degenerated distributions of
delay lengths, the impulse response can be made indistinguishable from an exponentially decaying
random Gaussian noise with a frequency-dependent decay rate. Designing the absorptive filters

according to Eq. 1 maintains a constant frequency density along the response by imposing a uni-
form decay of all neighboring modes at any frequency, and thus avoiding isolated “ringing modes”
in the reverberation tail.

5.2 Unitary-Feedback Delay Networks (UFDN)

The use of a unitary (energy-preserving) feedback matrix, i.e., verifying A ∗ A = I, where A∗

denotes the (Hermitian) transpose of A and I denotes the identity matrix, was proposed in [108].
It can be shown that this choice yields a prototype network, i.e., forces all system poles to lie on

25
the unit circle.
The unitary character can be defined not only for mixing matrices, but, more generally, for N-
input, N-output delay networks: a network is said to be unitary if its matrix transfer function H(z)

is unitary for any complex variable z on the unit circle, or, equivalently, if signal energy is preserved
through the system [44]. Unitary networks are thus defined as the multichannel equivalent of all-
pass filters.
It can be shown that any FDN whose open loop forms a unitary (or all-pass) network has all

of its poles on the unit circle [59, 26]. This means that a general class of arbitrarily complex
topologies for artificial reverberation is defined by cascaded or embedded unitary networks and
all-pass filters in a multichannel lossless feedback loop.

5.3 Practical FDN design

The topology of Figure 21 can be regarded as only one particular way of designing a multichannel
unitary feedback loop. However, whatever the topology of the prototype FDN, it can always be
represented as a bank of delay units whose outputs and inputs are connected by a “canonic feedback
matrix” having only scalar entries (for generality, additional input and output matrices are also

necessary, connecting the bank of delay units to the input and output channels).
When the canonic feedback matrix has a low enough crest factor (i.e., all matrix coefficient
have similar magnitudes), 8 to 16 delay units adding up to about 1 second are sufficient in prac-
tice to provide sufficient density in both the time and frequency domains, even for very long or

infinite decay times. For reverberators with multiple input and/or output channels, the prototype
network should be made to behave as a multichannel noise generator where the set of impulse
responses associated to the different input/output channel combinations are mutually uncorrelated

white Gaussian noises with equal variance. This can be readily obtained with a unitary feedback
matrix in the canonic topology of Figure 21, which yields a reverberator appropriate for simulating
a diffuse sound field as shown in Figure 22.
Examples of practical UFDN topologies can be found in [59, 57, 42, 26]. As an illustration,

26
Figure 22: Conceptual analog of multi-channel reverberator simulating diffuse-field reverberation.

Figure 23 shows a reverberator comprising two chains of six absorbent all-pass filters and one
delay line, each of which are fed back through an energy preserving matrix M . Two independent
output signals are obtained by tapping the chains after each absorbent all-pass filter.

Figure 23: Example FDN reverberator based on cascaded all-pass filter chains [26].

5.4 Control of time-frequency decay characteristics

In order to control the reverberation spectrum E(ω) and the decay time T r(ω) independently, it
is necessary to predict how the power gain of the FDN is affected by the attenuation introduced

by the absorptive filters. Assuming a unitary feedback matrix, the total power gain of the loop is
P
k= i gi 2 /N , where gi is given by Eq. 1, and the power gain of the FDN is given by k + k 2 +
k 3 + ... = k/(1 − k). Therefore, the spectrum E(ω), the reverberation time T r(ω) and the delay
lengths τi can be controlled independently by inserting a correcting filter c(ω) in cascade with the

27
FDN:
N
X
2
|c(ω)| = E(ω)(1/k − 1), where k = (10−6τi /T r(ω) )/N (2)
i=1

Equations 1 and 2 provide explicit control over the reverberation time T r(ω) and the spectrum

E(ω) with an error smaller than a few percents or a fraction of a dB, respectively. The design of
the filters gi (ω) and c(ω) can be optimized by a dedicated analysis-synthesis procedure to sim-
ulate the diffuse reverberation decay of an existing room, with arbitrary accuracy and frequency
resolution [60, 57].

With this design methodology, an inexpensive FDN can simulate the late diffuse reverberation
of a room with a degree of accuracy and naturalness comparable to that of a convolution tech-
nique, initially reported in [87], using an exponentially decaying noise signal to model the impulse
response. However, even when compared to fast zero-delay convolution algorithms, FDNs yield

more efficient implementations and offer the advantage of providing several independent input or
output channels for no additional processing cost. Perhaps more importantly, FDNs also allow
unlimited reverberations times and control of decay characteristics through a small set of filter co-
efficients. Parametric control of the decay time vs. frequency can be implemented with simple 1st-

or 2nd-order absorptive filters, for a wide range of applications.

6 3D Auditory Display

The final stage of the auralization pipeline is to reproduce a three-dimensional sound field for the

ears of the listener. Here we use 3D auditory display devices to deliver the sound to the user. The
goals are similar to those of stereo or holographic displays for imagery. For virtual environments,
it is especially important that the auditory display device at least produce directional sound waves

that provide 3D localization cues.

In this section, we provide an overview of several common 3D auditory display techniques,
comparing them in terms of setup, directional range, directional accuracy, size of sweet spot, ro-
bustness of imaging, sensitivity to loudspeaker placement, availability of a corresponding record-

ing setup, and complexity. Finally, we conclude with some remarks related to the use of such

28
techniques in immersive virtual reality systems.

6.1 Binaural and Transaural Techniques

One class of techniques focuses on recreating the wave field at both ears of the listener using either

headphones (binaural techniques) or loudspeakers (transaural techniques) [84, 83, 61].

Human auditory 3D localization is based on the effects of resonances inside the ear and scatter-
ing in the vicinity of the head and upper body. The dominant cues are interaural time delay (ITD)
and interaural level difference (ILD). These cues depend on the incident direction of the sound

wave, and curvature of the incident wavefronts, which in turn depend on head shadow, pinna and
ear canal filtering, and shoulder reflections. For additional details on human spatial hearing, we
refer the reader to [12, 9, 31]. See [104] for additional information on perception in reverberant
environments.

Modeling and measuring HRTFs

Head Related Transfer Functions (HRTFs) provide filters that model the overall effects of head,
ear and torso on sound propagation. For binaural and transaural auditory displays, an HRTF filter

should be applied for every geometric propagation path according to the direction of sound waves
traveling along the path as they reach the listener.
HRTFs can either be simulated or modeled. A simple approximation is to model the head of
the listener as a simple sphere and derive corresponding diffraction filters. Other more sophis-

ticated techniques use a 3D model of the head and run boundary element simulations to derive
the filters [62]. HRTFs can also be measured directly for a real listener by placing small micro-
phones either directly at the entrance or inside the ear canal. Dummy-heads and manikins are also
available which can be used for binaural recordings or HRTFs measurements. The MIT media

lab made available HRTFs measurements of a KEMAR dummy head. Techniques have also been
proposed to smoothly interpolate HRTFs, thus reducing the amount of data to measure and allow
for artifact-free rendering of mobile sources (see [43] (part 5) and [127]). However, HRTF data
are not usually publicly available and hence, every implementation of a binaural rendering sys-

29
tem usually relies on an ad-hoc HRTF set. Also, although it is recognized that the curvature of the
wave-fronts (i.e. distance of the source to the listener) impacts the head related effects, most HRTF
sets are measured at a single reference distance from the user (e.g. 1 meter). Rendering of distance

cues usually relies only on attenuation and atmospheric scattering. Although such techniques can
lead to satisfying results when combined with reverberation effects, it does not produce convincing
results when a non-reverberant soundfield is simulated. However, the approach described in [103]
provides an approximation of near-field HRTFs from far-field HRTFs. Another problem might

arise from the headphone itself. Indeed when a listener wears headset, an acoustic cavity forms
between the headphone and the eardrum. The resonances of this cavity and the response of the
headset itself from an additional transfer function that can significantly impact the quality of the
reproduction. For best results, it is thus advised that this additional transfer function be taken into

account.

Figure 24: HRTF measurement setup in Bell Labs’ anechoic chamber.

Adapting HRTFs

HRTFs vary upon individuals due to the specificity of one’s head/ear/torso morphology [115]. The
use of non-individual HRTF for binaural synthesis entails several perceptual artifacts such as in-

creased inside-the-head localization and increased front-back confusion. Adding early reflections
and reverberation provides enhanced distance cues and improved outside-the-head localization (ex-
ternalization). However, to maximize the quality of HRTF filtering it may be necessary to adapt

30
the filters to the particular morphology and hearing of each individual. This is usually achieved
by warping some salient frequency-space features of HRTFs filters [53, 54]. Currently, no system
provides a simple, user-controlled way to calibrate a set of HRTFs to a particular user. However,

some related work has appeared in the context of transaural rendering [56].

Efficient implementation of binaural filtering

Binaural filtering can be efficiently implemented using a principal component analysis of the filters
(see [43] (part 5) and [127]). This allows, for instance, for efficient rendering of multiple sound

paths in the context of a simulation based on geometrical acoustics. In such a model, HRTF filters
for all possible incoming directions are expressed as weighted contribution of a set of eigenfilters.
The cost of rendering multiple sources is not linear in the number of sources anymore, but instead
also depends on the number of eigenvectors chosen to represent the HRTFs. If the number of source

is greater than the number of eigenvectors, the number of instructions is reduced: M N + M K

operations per sample required instead of KN for K sources and M eigenfilters of length N. For
a description of the corresponding processing pipeline we refer the reader to [43] (part 5).

Cross-talk cancellation and transaural stereo

Binaural reproduction can also be achieved over a pair of loudspeakers, a process referred to as
transaural restitution. In this case, the signal emitted by the left speaker will reach the right ear of
the listener and vice versa (see Figure 25). Hence, the cross-talk needs to be cancelled to reproduce

the correct restitution. For more information on how to implement transaural filtering we refer the
reader to the extensive literature on the subject [41, 83, 43].
Transaural stereo techniques suffer from a limited sweet-spot and are usually limited to desk-
top use. They also suffer from frequent front back reversal problems, although recent double

transaural approaches improve the restitution by rendering frontal sources on a frontal stereo pair
of speakers and back sources on an additional pair of speakers located behind the listener.

31
Figure 25: Transaural audio rendering: a binaural signal is playedback through loudspeakers re-
quiring the cross-talk between the speakers and the ears of the listener to be cancelled.

6.2 Multi-Channel Auditory Displays

Another class of techniques constructs a 3D sound field using an array of loudspeakers. In this case,

speakers are placed around the listening area to reproduce directional sound waves. This method
can reproduce correct localization cues without the expense of HRTF filtering. Such techniques
are usually used for large audiences, but they tend to suffer from sweet spot problems.

Multi-channel amplitude/intensity panning

A simple and efficient technique for multi-speaker output is Vector-Based Amplitude Panning
(VBAP) [95]. The idea is to locate the triplet of speakers S i ( corresponding to directions Di )
closer to the desired sound incoming direction D and use gains g i that satisfy:
3
X
D= gi Di
i=1

Other solutions are based on an optimization process [30].

Amplitude panning is fundamentally based on our auditory perception, especially the way we

perceive the combination of two sources [12] as “phantom images”. Assuming the sources are
equidistant to the listening position, increasing or decreasing the gain for one source will respec-
tively shift the perceived source location towards or away from the real sources 2 . Although this is
2
this is also true if one source is delayed relative to the other but produces much less stable results

32
mostly true for stereo listening and sources in front of the listener, it is possible to generalize this
principle to an arbitrary 3D array of loudspeakers.
For all amplitude-based panning techniques, a good compromise must be found between the

number of active speakers for a given direction (thus the sharpness of sound imaging) and the
smoothness of the generated sound-field when a source is moving around a listener. This problem is
especially evident when a virtual source enters the reproduction region (see Figure 26). Amplitude
panning does not support such a case and it is impossible to render virtual sources close to the

listener.

listener

reproduction
region
room
boundary

(a) (b) (c)

Figure 26: Lefthandside image: Triplets of speakers can be used to achieve 3D panning over
arbitrary loudspeaker arrays [95]. Righthandside images: (a) A mapping needs to be established
between the real reproduction space and the virtual world (b) the direction change gets very sharp
when the virtual source moves close to the virtual listener. (c) Real loudspeaker position tends
to affect the perceived location of the virtual sound source. Amplitude panning techniques have
difficulties reproducing trajectories crossing the reproduction region.

For “surround-sound” (e.g. 5.1/7.1) like setups, computing the gains is even easier since all
speakers lie in a plane and the problem becomes two-dimensional. Of course, such systems do not
allow for reproduction of elevation of the virtual sound source 3 . Recently multi-channel recording
setups have appeared, which combine the inputs of several microphones to give a 5.1 soundtrack.

6.2.1 Ambisonics

Ambisonics [45, 81] is a case of amplitude panning that uses a spherical harmonics decomposition
of the directional pressure-field incident to the listener location. 4 Classic ambisonic encoding uses
four channels (i.e. 1st order spherical harmonics) to model the directional soundfield. From these
3
such systems are also called pantophonic as opposed to periphonic systems that can reproduce full 3D effects
4
see http://mathworld.wolfram.com/SphericalHarmonic.html for more info on spherical harmonics

33
four channels, corresponding to an omnidirectional (pressure) and three “figure-of-8” (pressure
gradient) coincident recordings, the spatial soundfield can be reproduced over multiple loudspeak-
ers using several decoding techniques [27].

Ambisonics can be considered a sound field representation format since it encodes in four chan-
nels all the spatial information. Ambisonics encoded soundfields support straightforward transfor-
mations such as rotations, “perspective” corrections, etc.
Moreover, a recording device, the Soundfield microphone, is available that can record the four

coincident channels required for the spatial reproduction. The four channels can also be encoded
into two channels for recording onto traditional stereo media or converted to standard 5.1 surround
using a dedicated processor.
Ambisonics can also be extended to higher orders although in that case no recording device is

currently available on the market.

6.2.2 Wave-field synthesis

Wave-Field Synthesis (WFS) aims at reproducing the exact wave fronts inside the listening space [11].
WFS is based on the Kirchoff integral theorem stating that any wave front can be reconstructed

inside a close volume from a distribution of monopole and dipole sources located on the surface
enclosing the volume5 (see Figure 27):

n
s dS
U r

Figure 27: Notations for the Kirchoff integral theorem.

ZZ ! ZZ
eikr eikr
P̂ (M ) = P̂ (U)∇ − · dS − − ∇P̂(U) · dS, (3)
S 4πr S 4πr
5
no source must be present inside the volume

34
 ikr
où dS = ndS (n is a unit vector), − e4πr is the Green function representing the propagation of a
spherical wave in free field from an arbitrary location.

WFS usually requires a large array of loudspeakers and heavy processing resources to feed
all the channels. Current implementations usually limit the speakers to a line array at listener’s
height all around the reproduction room and use about 120-160 output channels. In this case, only
monopole sources are required and correction terms can be included to account for the fact that

loudspeakers cannot be considered as true monopole sources [11].

6.3 A Comparison of 3D Auditory Displays

Table 6.3 gives an overview of several aspects of the previously described techniques. Due to
the countless variations in implementations and optimizations of the various techniques, it is dif-

ficult to make a simple comparison. Most techniques, except for wave field synthesis reproduce
the sound field for a specific listening point. Binaural and transaural techniques directly attempt
to model the sound field at both ears, while techniques based on loudpeaker arrays reconstruct
the sound field at the center of the reproduction setup (and usually degrade quickly as the listener

moves off-center). Multi-channel panning techniques are simple and efficient, but are more limited
in imaging quality than Ambisonic techniques. Wave-field synthesis is uniquely able to reconstruct
the correct wavefronts everywhere inside the listening region and is thus a true multi-user repro-
duction system. However, the inherent complexity of a WFS setup has, to date, prevented its use

in virtual environment systems.

Choosing a spatial audio reproduction system is a very difficult task and strongly depends on
the configuration and constraints of the listening space and the application (constraints relative to

the display, number of simultaneous users, importance of accuracy in the restitution). A thorough
investigation has yet to be performed in order to determine which setup best supports which appli-
cation or virtual reality setup. A excellent overview of spatial sound reproduction techniques can
be found in [28] (available only in french).

35
 Restitution technique Listening point sweet spot quality of imaging limitations # channels
Binaural unique n/a excellent mono-user 2
Transaural unique very small excellent mono-user 2 (4 for extended transaural)
Amplitude panning unique very small average fails for virtual sources inside reproduction region 4 and more
Ambisonics unique small good fails for virtual sources inside reproduction region (N + 1) 2 for periphonic N th order ambisonics
2N + 1 for pantophonic N th order ambisonics
usually requires M speakers, M > N
WFS global n/a excellent heavy setup 100+

7 Conclusion and Future Directions

In this paper, we survey basic methods for auralization in interactive virtual environment appli-

cations. To summarize, common practice is to use geometric acoustic modeling algorithms to

compute early reflections, feedback delay networks to fill late reverberations, and headphones or
loudspeakers to deliver spatialized sound. Current geometric algorithms are able to compute sev-
eral orders of specular reflections for non-trivial environments at interactive rates, while artificial

reverberators can model responses of arbitrary length. Audio technology has reached a point where
advanced algorithms, hardware, and auditory display technology are becoming standard compo-
nents of personal computers and home entertainment systems. Based on recent advances in both
hardware and software algorithms, it seems that we have reached a time when every virtual envi-

ronment application should be including spatialized sounds.

However, there is still a large amount of research to be done on auralization for interactive
applications. First of all, validation of simulations by comparison to measured data is an important
topic for further study. Validation studies traditionally done for concert halls tend to compare only

gross qualitative measures (e.g., reverberation time), which may have little relevance for localiza-
tion and other tasks of importance in interactive virtual environment applications. Further work
is required on developing new measures for comparison of impulse responses and incorporating
interactive criteria into validation studies.

Utilizing human perception of sound to improve auralization is another interesting topic for fur-
ther study. We believe it is possible to guide computational methods based on perceptual relevance,
and it should be possible to produce better auditory displays with better psychoacoustic data. Re-
cent studies have shown that visuals have an impact on sound perception and vice-versa [105, 111].

In particular, it has recently been shown [111] that 1) medium or high quality auditory displays cou-

36
pled with high-quality displays increases the perceived quality of the visual displays compared to
the evaluation of the visual displays alone and 2) that low-quality auditory displays coupled with
high-quality visual displays decrease the perceived quality of the auditory displays compared to

the evaluation of the auditory displays alone. However, too few results are currently available in
the field of cross-modal perception. This topic deserves considerable further study.
Finally, researchers should further investigate the synergies between sound and light and ap-
ply the lessons learned from one wave phenomenon to the other. As a historical example of this

type of cross-fertilization, Turner Whitted [133] patterned his seminal ray tracing algorithm after
similar methods described for acoustics in the 1960s [73]. More recently, hierarchical radios-
ity methods [49] developed in computer graphics have been used for modeling sound propaga-
tion [121]. Along these lines, future research could consider whether recent trends in graphics,

such as image-based rendering and non-photorealistic rendering, can/should be applied in acous-

tics. Understanding the interactions between sound and light is of critical importance to future
design and engineering of interactive virtual environment systems.

37
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List of Figures

1 Basic auralization pipeline. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

2 Sound propagation paths from a source (S) to a receiver (R). . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

3 Sound waves impingent upon a surface usually reflect specularly and/or diffract at
edges. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4 Interference can occur when two sound waves meet. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
5 Boundary element mesh. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

6 Impulse response (left) representing 353 propagation paths (right) for up to ten
orders of specular reflections between a point source and a point receiver (omni-
directional) in a coupled-rooms environment (two rooms connected by an open
door). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

7 Direct, early, and late parts of an impulse response. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

8 Image source method. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
9 Construction of image sources for a 2D box-shaped environment. The audio source
is labeled ‘S.’ Virtual sources appear as unlabeled dots. The “walls” of the box-

shaped room are shown as wide lines near the middle. The thinner lines forming a
rectilinear tiling pattern are included only for visualization purposes. . . . . . . . . 11
10 Ray tracing method. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
11 Beam tracing method. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

12 Beam tracing culls invisible virtual sources. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

13 Beams (left) can be precomputed and then queried quickly to update propagation
paths (right) at interactive rates. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
14 Notations for Doppler shifting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

15 (a) specular reflection: θr = θi , (b) diffuse lambertian reflection. . . . . . . . . . . 18

51
16 The Geometric Theory of Diffraction approximates diffraction of a ray incident to
a wedge as a cone of diffracted rays, such that θ i = θd (left). For each diffraction,
a complex diffraction coefficient can be computed. Values of the UTD coefficients

are visualized on the right for point-source radiating over a half-plane. . . . . . . . 19

17 A 3D view of a virtual source (right), microphone (left), obstacles and first Fresnel
ellipsoids computed at 400 and 1000 Hz. Occlusion ratio of the ellipsoids can be
used to derive a frequency-dependent visibility factor [124]. . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

18 Auralization pipeline: From the geometry, propagation paths are constructed be-
tween each sound source and the listener. Then, for each propagation path, a digital
filter is created and is convolved with the source signal. Spatial processing can be
implemented in the pipeline to reproduce 3D positional audio effects. . . . . . . . 21

19 Signal processing pipeline for a sound path. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

20 Example artificial reverberator. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
21 Basic feedback delay network. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
22 Conceptual analog of multi-channel reverberator simulating diffuse-field reverber-

ation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
23 Example FDN reverberator based on cascaded all-pass filter chains [26]. . . . . . . 27
24 HRTF measurement setup in Bell Labs’ anechoic chamber. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
25 Transaural audio rendering: a binaural signal is playedback through loudspeakers

requiring the cross-talk between the speakers and the ears of the listener to be
cancelled. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

52
26 Lefthandside image: Triplets of speakers can be used to achieve 3D panning over
arbitrary loudspeaker arrays [95]. Righthandside images: (a) A mapping needs to
be established between the real reproduction space and the virtual world (b) the

direction change gets very sharp when the virtual source moves close to the virtual
listener. (c) Real loudspeaker position tends to affect the perceived location of the
virtual sound source. Amplitude panning techniques have difficulties reproducing
trajectories crossing the reproduction region. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

27 Notations for the Kirchoff integral theorem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

53