This research colloquium was a session presented by the Stuttgart Media University, introduced by Banu Sahin and moderated by Professor Dr. Frank Melchior. Three students showed the results of their master’s theses, all dealing with the aspects of producing 3D audio content and looking at the production side.
Leon and Maurice talked about recordings specifically for 3D audio with a three-channel spot-microphone arrangement. The research was started by Leon with recording sessions and initial tests to check the performance of the approach. Maurice developed a tool to make the array and post-processing applicable for sound engineers. In the presentation, both focused on the initial system description, the anechoic recordings and their approach to the software decoding and panning tool. Starting with the concepts and principles of sound localisation and their application to the topic, they showed the setup of the developed microphone array used to record musical instruments in an anechoic chamber. The post-processed audio recordings were demonstrated as binaural audio samples.
Jonas continued with a presentation about an object-based spatial wavetable synthesizer. With his research, he wanted to investigate how 3D audio can be implemented in such a virtual instrument and how experts evaluate the performance of its design. So he started the presentation with some basics about wavetable synthesis and 3D audio, which he used to develop his tool. The synthesizer primarily uses the direction and extend attributes to create a 3D sound experience without additional reverb or room simulations and brings spatialisation to the composition process of a production. To give an insight, Jonas described the basic system integration, the rendering tool and the evaluation matrix he used. He also provided audio examples – headphones required!
We thank Jonas, Maurice and Leon for the very nice presentations, as well as Banu Sahin and Professor Dr. Frank Melchior for moderating. This session nicely rounded up the first decade of research colloquia and offered a lot of possible applied research on the production of 3D audio.
A video of the talk is available on YouTube.
Additional Information
- Scarborough Fair Binaural
- Reproducing the auditory width of individual acoustic instruments in immersive audio productions using a three-channel spot-microphone arrangement -System description and anechoic test recording
- A History of Spatial Music
- Kieser – Entwicklung und Evaluation eines Prototyps zur Integration von 3D–Audio in einen virtuellen Wavetable Synthesizer