Spatial Aliasing Effects in a Steerable Parametric Loudspeaker for Stereophonic Sound Reproduction

SUMMARY Earlier attempts to deploy two units of parametric loudspeakers have shown encouraging results in improving the accuracy of spatial audio reproductions. As compared to a pair of conventional loudspeakers, this improvement is mainly a result of being free of crosstalk due to the sharp directivity of the parametric loudspeaker. By replacing the normal parametric loudspeaker with the steerable parametric loudspeaker, a flexible sweet spot can be created that tolerates head movements of the listener. However, spatial aliasing effects of the primary frequency waves are always observed in the steerable parametric loudspeaker. We are motivated to make use of the spatial aliasing effects to create two sound beams from one unit of the steerable parametric loudspeaker. Hence, a reduction of power consumption and physical size can be achieved by cutting down the number of loudspeakers used in an audio system. By introducing a new parameter, namely the relative steering angle, we propose a stereophonic beamsteering method that can control the amplitude difference corresponding to the interaural level difference (ILD) between two sound beams. Currently, this proposed method does not support the reproduction of interaural time differences (ITD).