New method improves modeling of moving sound sources and echoes
Spherical Harmonic Sliced Wasserstein Displacement Interpolation for Acoustic Source and Reflection Density Modeling
Sound
Summary
Capturing how sound moves and bounces in a room is hard, especially when the sound source moves. The paper studies mathematical ways to better interpolate these sounds using a concept called the Wasserstein metric in a special spherical harmonics space. The authors introduce new formulas to represent sound directions efficiently and compare their method to simpler approaches. Their approach helps reduce the complexity of the sound model while maintaining quality.
What this means in practice
- •For acoustic engineers: Create more accurate moving sound source models for room acoustics simulation and design tasks.
- •For audio software developers: Improve sound source and reflection interpolation algorithms in spatial audio applications and virtual reality environments.
Authors
Yuancheng Luo
Abstract
Spatial room impulse responses (SRIRs) capture directional distributions of acoustic sound-sources and their reflections. However, collecting SRIRs of moving sound-sources remains a challenge, requiring complex interpolations across measurements that account for multi-path spatial-temporal dynamics. This paper investigates the Wasserstein metric and displacement for evaluating interpolated SRIR echo densities in the spherical harmonic domain. We present novel sum-of-magnitude square expansions for efficiently fitting probability density functions, maximizing likelihood, inverse sampling, and computing spherical sliced Wasserstein interpolations. Experiments compare the Wasserstein displacements and metric to linear and geometric interpolations of SRIR image-source densities on a line-path, and demonstrate model-order reduction.