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Spatialisation Accuracy of a Virtual Performance System

This paper is a collaboration between the Digital Design Studio, ARUP acoustics and The University of York. DDS and ARUP have funded (£100k) the construction of the SoundLab, an innovative virtual listening environment, permitting clients and designers to hear the sound of existing spaces and to test the sound of designs. With industrial funding from ARUP, it has been possible to fund a doctoral research student (Iain Laird) facilitating ground breaking research into virtual performance spaces (VPS). This paper describes how VPS have been used to investigate the effect of stage acoustics on the performance techniques of musicians. The paper describes how a VPS can be calibrated using omnidirectional, energy-based quantities. It goes on to describe how the spatialisation accuracy of specific reflections can be assessed using time-frequency analysis. VPS are becoming more and more topical in the field of acoustics and audio environments. This study greatly facilitates research into VPS through our findings that calibrating a VPS using omnidirectional, energy-based quantities results in a reasonably accurate simulation in terms of known acoustic quantities such as T30.