Localization of a Virtual Point Source within the Listening Area for Wave Field Synthesis

One of the main advantages of Wave Field Synthesis (WFS) is the existence of an extended listening area contrary to the sweet spot in stereophony. At the moment there is only little literature available on the actual localization properties of WFS at different points in the listening area. One reason is the difficulty to place different subjects reliable at different positions. This study systematically investigates the localization performance for WFS at many positions within the listening area. To overcome the difficulty to place subjects, the different listening positions and loudspeaker arrays were simulated by dynamic binaural synthesis. In a pre-study it was verified that this method is suitable to investigate the localization performance in WFS.

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