Calibration and 3-D sound reproduction in the immersive audio environment

The effectiveness of virtual environments depends largely on how efficiently they recreate the real world. In the case of auditory virtual environments, the importance of accurate recreation is enhanced since there are no visual cues to assist perception, as in the case of audio-visual virtual environments. In this paper, we present the Immersive Audio Environment (IAE), an easily constructible and portable structure, which is capable of 3-D sound auralization with very high spatial resolution. A novel method for acoustically positioning loudspeakers in space, which is required by the IAE for simulation of sound sources, is presented in this paper. Our contribution is the creation of a system that uses existing and modifications of existing techniques such as Vector Based Amplitude Panning (VBAP) in order to recreate an audio battle environment. The IAE recreates the audio effects of battle scenes and can be used as a virtual battle environment for the training of soldiers. It can also easily be used in other areas such as commercial entertainment. © 2011 IEEE.